Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

Truth and honesty are some of the most powerful principles to developing a nation.

Naturally, this country can't stand truth.

Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?

Ultimately, the only people who are in any way edified by hanging with famous people are you at the age of 11 and your mom.

I suppose it is a gift, being young, but it isn't special. We've all got it, early in life.

I am sick of living out of a suitcase.

The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change.

We must get rid of all the guns.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.

My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious.