Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

The whisper of the dusk is night shedding its husk.

Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake.

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.

Only once in a generation does anything as fresh as a vomiting detective come along.

The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.

Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions or a damaged mind.

Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.

Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am.

So we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchocks, but he still went on singing.

Sit down before fact as a little child be prepared to give up every preconceived notion follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads or you shall learn nothing.

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.

I really don't like plays or movies that service propaganda.

Faith is a vulnerable thing, not a battle.

I know how difficult it can be when the image you've had of something doesn't match its reality; when the friend beside you turns into a monster.

There was never a recorded Iraqi terrorists in the last 20 years in any terrorist attack. There were no terrorists in Iraq until we invaded it.

Being in the audience actually looks like quite a lot of fun.

Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.

If it's nice out, I swim pretty much every day for about half an hour. I have a great pool; it's very private and not too many people use it.