If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.

And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

You love someone, you've got to let something go.

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.

From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

We are all living history, and it’s hard to say now what will be important in the future. One thing’s certain, though: if we throw it away, it’s gone.

Everything that creates itself upon the backs of smaller scales will by those same scales be consumed.

Drummed into me, above all, by my dad, by the whole family, was that without your good name, you would be nothing.

Poems are language turned into art; sound and sense matter; they can be as long or longer than The Odyssey or as short or shorter than a haiku. Not very helpful.

Let your *need* guide you behavior. *Supress* your instinct to lead... Pursue Rabbit!

The Refinement of Shame. People are not ashamed to think something foul, but they are ashamed when they think these foul thoughts are attributed to them.

Everything hinges on how you look at things

The theologian who labors without joy is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this field.

I need a lot of alone time as a human. And especially on a movie set when you're around people all day long. So it's actually kind of nice to go home to a hotel and be alone and unwind.

Now, anybody can make a movie, and I don't see that many great movies, because I think there's only a limited amount of talent out there.