It's my opinion that if you're trying to tell a realistic story that centers around realistic characters, you can't help but touch on important issues. Those issues are what make us human.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

The word of God is an immense wealth.

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten', he does not say 'My men were beaten.

Do you drink?""Of course, I just said I was a writer.

The House of Lords is like a glass of champagne that has stood for five days

All the masters tell us that the reality of life - which our noisy walking consciousness prevents us from hearing - speaks to us chiefly in silence.

God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification

People always tell me, 'Reinvent yourself, re-this, re-whatever.' I haven't reinvented myself. It's an honest evolution. I've always been authentic.

You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing's vile hard reading.

Most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

You cannot buy your way to share of voice today; you cannot buy attention anymore.