Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation, and new people, new readers, need to be brought into the conversation too.

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family who attended universities were cured of long ago.

No two readers can or will ever read the same book, because the reader builds the book in collaboration with the author.

It's oneiric, a beautiful, formless sequence of silver nitrate shadows, and when it ends I wonder what happened, and then I begin to rebuild it in my head

We have an obligation to make things beautiful, to not leave the world uglier than we found it.

You can no more read the same book again than you can step into the same river.

Without stories, we are incomplete.

Books are really places, make no mistake about that.

Scientific advancement should aim to affirm and to improve human life.

I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event.

A woman is most beautiful when she smiles. Other than that, the most valuable tip I've learned is always use a skin moisturiser!

You have to liberate yourself first from the prejudices of the world in which you live.

Youth is immortal; Tis the elderly only grow old!

The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights

Wrath clapped his brother on the shoulder. On the whole, though, the SOB was a total keeper. “Forgiven, forgotten.” “Feel free to hammer me anytime.” “Believe me, I do.

At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable.

The stored-program digital computer has three major attributes: it is fast, it is accurate, and it is stupid. The first two attributes are often used to disguise the third.