Independent women must expect more of themselves, since neither men nor other more conventionally domesticated women will hope for anything, or expect any result other than utter failure.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

Things are not what they seem.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

Would anyone notice if I just... left

To make a film you have to dream a film... that's true of poetry as well.

The object of pure Physic[s] is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure Mathematic[s] that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.

Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.

Jesus was not just godly, godlike, God hungry, God focused, or God worshipping. He was God. Not merely a servant of God, instrument of God, or friend of God, but Jesus was God.

A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page.

Some of the most challenging moves towards health are made with the simplest of steps and that is why I wrote The Start Here Diet.

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes -- de essentia hominum.