It's great people still care about books, and it's great you can still fashion a life from literature.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

I had to go outside. I had to let the element of chance in.

Nobody speaks the truth when there is something they must have.

Love's way of dealing with us is different from conscience's way. Conscience commands; love inspires. What we do out of love, we do because we want to.

If you don't have a vision, nothing happens.

Do you fear death? Do you fear that dark abyss? All your deeds laid bare. All your sins punished. I can offer you...an escape.

Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, all the time.

Painting requires skill. Photography is created by the camera, and one cannot fully control what the camera sees. So people take many photographs because several must always be discarded.

An Irish wedding is a tame thing to an Irish funeral.

Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.

Far from the world I walk, and from all care.