Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

Things are not what they seem.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

We are born in the ocean of love and we love the ocean and her touch so much.

Even small gestures of kindness have the potential to reap enormous rewards. Only the shortsighted man believes otherwise.

Mental energy is powerful. Direct its strength towards our positive aspirations rather than empowering unsubstantiated fears.

I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.

Vickie is so fat that her baby pictures were taken via satellite.

There's no second chance on stage, and I was trained to make the most of my first chance.

Nonviolence does not require any outside or outward training.

A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless . . . all a woman has to do is put you on hold.

Be brave enough to turn away from shiny objects, and toward the light that makes them shine.

My body is so important to me... my face, my arms, my legs, my hands, my eyes, everything. I use everything I have.