Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.

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.)

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

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.

Time they say is a great healer, but in this case, I am not sure that is true.

Darkness as well as light. Or do I mean darkness, another kind of light? Lucifer would say so, and I have a weakness for fallen angels.

I love being reminded that existence itself is all about the tangling of souls.

I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.

In New York City, one suicide in ten is attributed to a lack of storage space.

I always thought it was a trap to fit into ideologies, and maybe that's a luxury position, but my work is a reflection of my being here. My being here is not a reflection of an idea.

Everybody has a theme. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realize they have one particular thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that's about it.

I like to go to places where you can relax a little after youre done working.

I would love to be in the Hall Of Fame.

A plodding diligence brings us sooner to our journey's end than a fluttering way of advancing by starts.