Politeness. Being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else.

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

Of course I loved books more than people.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

What better place to kill time than a library?

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.

Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.

Metagapism is the belief that love is the ultimate reality, literally god and the one shared soul, and the source, nature and destiny of all.

We've seen more reform in the last year than we've seen in decades, and we haven't spent a dime yet. It's staggering how the Recovery Act is driving change.

Timing is everything. That's a cliche. Now. If I'd said that a long time ago, I'd have been original.

An obligation is something which constrains or induces us to act.

Try for a record of emotion, rather than a piece of topography.

You know the illusion of the cheap money is over and now Britain has to go out there and graft and earn its way and create wealth and prosperity in a very competitive world.

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

The major fortunes in America have been made in land.

Who could ever tell a story complete?

There is only one sin - lack of love. Be brave, be capable of loving, even if love seems a terrible and treacherous thing. Find joy in love. Find joy in victory. Follow the dictates of your heart.