I was a scholarship minor public school day boy at Ardingly College and later Whitgift School. Then, straight into work as a journalist - a wonderful thing for a writer.

I really don't know what "I love you" means. I think it means "Don't leave me here alone.

Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

You’re alive. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.

You have to finish things - that's what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

I squinted at her. “You’re an adult.” “You’re an adult too.” “But you’re an older adult. You’ve had more practice.” Mom leaned back and laughed.

Techniques are like tools: The more you have, the more options for getting a job done - but you have to know what you are building first.

Accept not a mediocre effort but any end result of a super effort

Mo Yan is a writer who, defiantly in the face of those who wish his work were less cartoonish and more straightforward in its political meanings, continues to sing his own peculiar and alluring song.

A constant realization of the presence of Spirit will provide a sense of Divine Companionship that no other attitude could produce.

Don't worry about how things are. Watch where they are headed.

What did you do to Amma?" "I was late to school." He studied my face. I studied his. "Number 2?" I nodded. "Sharp?" "Started out sharp and then she sharpened it.

There were tiny stars behind my eyelids, a whole galaxy of tiny, spinning stars.

Racism really does exist.

I surrendered my moral conscience to the fact that I was a soldier, and therefore a cog in a relatively low position of a great machine.