If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.

The story is always better than your ability to write it. My belief about this is that if you ever get to the point that you think you've done a story justice, you're in the wrong business.

When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.

Because she was a princess she had a pegasus.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.

There are things you don't want to know you can do

My capacity for invention is flash hot stark, I thought. Sucker sunshade. Disembodied radar-reconnaissance. Not to mention Bitter Chocolate Death and Killer Zebras. Pity about the rest of me.

Perhaps it is a human thing, to look upon such beauty and fail to encompass it.

[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.

It is a much more straightforward thing to be a dog, and a dog's love, once given, is not reconsidered.

Learn to Open Your Heart and mind to the infinite wonder that exists for you in life.

I think what actually works best is local-level individual targeting of key leadership nodes.

My parents' divorce left me with a lot of sadness and pain and acting, and especially humour, was my way of dealing with all that.

When I die, I don't want my demise to be used as a political rally, and that's what happened yesterday.

Almost every one has a predominant inclination, to which his other desires and affections submit, and which governs him, though perhaps with some intervals, though the whole course of his life.

It's a sort of philosophy you cook up for yourself. You probably write things the same as everybody else, but it's your own personal way of saying things.

Be the instrument playing the sound of your life's passing

In the U.K., there is a sort of obsession with class.

Everyone has challenges and lessons to learn - we wouldn't be who we are without them.

If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.