Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.

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.

Most human beings would have never been pained by the death of a human being if they had never seen a human being or pretending to be pained by that.

I needed a break...from myself.

People make mistakes, it's just part of life. But, it's what we do with those mistakes that matters. What matters is what we learn from the mistakes, not what the mistake is.

I've decided that I can also touch the hearts of many - dead people, but the living, too. (Cameryn Mahoney)

You know, right often, the body is the best thing we’ve got going for us. A body itself is a shiny object. Something!

There is moderation even in excess.

Man has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad predicament.

Happiness does not require an expanding economy

I got a girl named Bony Maronie, she's as skinny as a stick of macaroni.

Retired is being tired twice, I've thought, first tired of working, then tired of not.