Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.

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.

Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.

a good product is not the secret to success

People are starving for truth and leadership.

I can’t describe reality; at the most, I can try to capture things that seem to be valid, the way I see them.

You get yourself out there and you work hard, and you hope that word of mouth carries and one day somebody will actually step up to the plate and say, 'I believe that you can do this.'

Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.

It takes a long time to appreciate one's parents.

Give up bondage; become a son, be free, and then you can "see the Father", as did Jesus.

I believe in the age of the Internet, Facebook and Twitter, that relationships are everything.