Men see what they are most afraid of.

Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.

Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.

It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.

There was the gaudy patch of sunflowers beside the west gate of the palace of the Prince of Ombria, that did nothing all day long but turn their golden-haired, thousand-eyed faces to follow the sun.

She is our moon. Our tidal pull. She is the rich deep beneath the sea, the buried treasure, the expression in the owl's eye, the perfume in the wild rose. She is what the water says when it moves.

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.

Night is not something to endure until dawn. It is an element, like wind or fire. Darkness is its own kingdom; it moves to its own laws, and many living things dwell in it.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

Love and anger are like land and sea: They meet at many different places.

That's the beginning of magic. Let your imagination run and follow it.

What man ain't the honestest cove in his own eyes?" Grote's round face is a bronze moon in the dark. "'Tain't good intentions what paves the road to hell: it's self-justifyin's.

The milk of human kindness should be brought fresh to the table every morning.

He would make a lovely corpse.

I think maybe Mr. Sinise and Mr. Bacon have slightly bigger egos than I do.

The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you. My subject: how to explain to you that I don't belong to English though I belong nowhere else

I have always felt comfortable tapping into my inner idiot.

I generally wake up, exercise and read through a huge amount of newspapers. I get to the office somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 - my brothers and I are always the first ones in.

I feel strikingly domestic. We're in our own world with two busses and trucks.

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle, and a victory.

I guess, when you get down to it, a loving touch compensates for an unskilled hand about everywhere except in an airplane cockpit.