Nothing important comes with instructions.

Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean.

What is more yours than what always holds you back?

The best way to know your faults is to notice which ones you accuse others of.

Writing is like washing windows in the sun. With every attempt to perfect clarity, you make a new smear.

When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing.

Sophistication is upscale conformity.

The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.

It is the empty seats that listen most raptly.

All work is the avoidance of harder work.

Tyranny and fantasy both like to write everyone else's lines.

A thing may happen and be a total lie

Metaphors: knowledge existing in several states and without contradiction

Love could be passionate, compassionate, and kind. Love could be physical, spiritual, or eternal.

I have stories. But stories are not facts.''I like stories. Love them, actually. Most of the time they're better than facts.

The Eskimos live among ice all their lives but have no single word for ice.

She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw — I don't say she will, but she can.

Doing art that has a happy ending, that doesn't seem really corny, is extremely difficult to pull off convincingly.

Indeed, as long as a country has a culture a religion an ideology where Islam is dominant it will never be a democracy.

The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.

Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light.