It takes long practice, yes. You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have it as a gift? What is worth having is worth working for.

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both.

My knitting is simple", he said again. Ï can make anything you want with it, but it will always be simple.

Not all fairy tales have happily ever afters, some just have afters.

A moment will pass, but a movement will last.

My looks mean nothing to me. If anything, they are a hindrance.

If you're not part of that club, as I certainly am not, you are not presidential.

I try to be a nice person, but it's difficult sometimes.

If I like somebody else's tribe I'm going to promote the hell out of it. The whole thing is a democracy, and if somebody's more popular then good luck to them.

I think good actors - good, collaborative actors who see themselves as leaders in a given production - can and should offer ideas that have nothing to do with wanting to direct themselves.

There's a theory, and I think the theory is right, that in order to make a change you've got to make the whole language of the page harmonious. Well, that's a lot easier with a computer.

In the silence, in the darkness, swept away by these alien alkaloids and the plant-mind behind them, you find out a truth that can barely be told. And most of it can't be told.