Popular versus literary—a false divide?

They were lucky. They'd been given history.

And with a massive roar the fifth wall comes down and the house of fiction falls, taking Viola and Sunny and Bertie with it. They melt into thin air and disappear. Pouf!

All the birds who were never born, all the songs that were never sung and so can only exist in the imagination.And this one is Teddy's.

Oh, man, ‘the nursery, ’ ” Dominic said, “what a hell-hole. If I had kids I’d give them the nicest room in the house.”“You do have kids, ” his kid said.“Oh, yeah, well, right, you know what I mean.

If an author was a god, then he was a very poor second-rate one, scrabbling around in the foothills of Olympus.

was there a store somewhere full of unwanted secrets?

Secrets had the power to kill a marriage, she said. Nonsense, Sylvie said, it was secrets that could save a marriage.

Teddy shuddered. The idea of the sublime little bird being plucked from the sky, of its exquisite song being interrupted in full flight, was horrible to him.

I think that autistic brains tend to be specialized brains. Autistic people tend to be less social. It takes a ton of processor space in the brain to have all the social circuits.

I never expected to be a star, never counted on it, never even wanted it. Not that I didn't enjoy it all when it happened.

We are made of emotions, we are all looking for emotions, it's only a question of finding the way to experience them.

I have two Iceland horses, a very hairy dog called Looney, and a guinea pig.

We define ourselves by the best that is in us, not the worst that has been done to us.

...but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself.

My father was a really great man. I'll never forget the last thing he ever said to me. Nor will I ever repeat it.

I suppose there's a lot of people that've got a better life than me. But I don't know, I feel very fortunate and very blessed.

I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange - a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.

The greatest philosopher of all time was Dirty Harry. And if you remember, Dirty Harry took the words right out of my mouth: "A good man needs to know his limitations."