The air was heavy with the smell of leather and dust, of old parchment and binding glue. It smelled of secrets.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.

A group of white South Africans recently killed a black lawyer because he was black. That was wrong. They should have killed him because he was a lawyer.

It is no fun at all to have been writing a book for seven or so years, especially when you've never published anything before.

Let's keep people with weird religious faiths out of government. Especially those who have a weird religious faith IN government.

The most realistic blood I've seen is when Marlon Brando gets beat up in On The Waterfront.

Experience is the mother of custom.

Confucius was a humanist and an agnostic.

We cannot run away from the TB epidemic. It is a moral injustice.

They're 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?