It made me feel that I had to work very hard, but I've always felt I had to work very hard to get my own approval.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

That's it, cupcake. You're going down.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

My father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret.

You either know fashion or you don't.

The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction...the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them.

Being human is being a lot of things at the same time.

If God is the master of the universe, then what are we? The slaves of the universe? If so, let each man become proud Spartacus!

Every Catholic is one good Confession away from potential sainthood.

By the way, I don't mean to pick nits here, but Obama has just ordered the flag at half-mast for 10 days for Mandela. He did not order the flag at half-mast at all for Lady Thatcher.