Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.

The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.

Happiness quells thought. And work quells thought.

Literature is the voice of the human heart.

People die when curiosity goes.

I can do hieroglyphics in the margin. There are days when I really enjoy the flow of ink. I mean, nice pen, ink straight on to the page.

What we wish upon the future is very often the image of some lost, imagined past.

When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it.

I like the world we've got. If there is anything special and magical, I have to find it in the ordinary stuff.

Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying 'You're mad, you're mad.'

I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary.

A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind.

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

O God that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should with joy pleas-ance revel and applause transform ourselves into beasts!

I tell my employees that we're in the service business, and it's incidental that we fly airplanes.

Teach economy. That is one of the first and highest virtues. It begins with saving money.

We have the most skillful, firecest, and certainly the most ethical ground forces in the world... I'm not saying we have to commit right now, but certainly don't pull it off the table.

When I finally decided to do the show, I only had two weeks to learn the choreography and the songs in French.

Have you ever noticed how people who wear camouflage gear really stand out in a crowd?

We need to be sincere in our practice, but at the same time we can't take ourselves too seriously.

What is toleration? It is the prerogative of humanity. We are all steeped in weaknesses and errors: Let us forgive one another's follies, it is the first law of nature.