The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.

When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you're suffering in.

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.

Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.

The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.

Theo, Baleigh, and Lucas were good-looking people, and good-looking people hardly ever went unnoticed.

Do I need permission to breathe, Sir?

Can you be inside and outside at the same time?I think this is where I live.I think this is where most women live.I know this is where writers live.Inside to write. Outside to glean.

I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books.

You don't have to go the gym - just walk 10,000 steps a day and you are activating your good genes. But do practise yoga.

I'm very grateful for the people that I work with, because I don't get to choose them.

People say you should give until it hurts. I say you should give until it stops hurting. Know what I mean?

It is a religious duty for those who cook to learn how to prepare food in different ways, hygienically, for the table, so that it may be eaten with enjoyment.

Fairy tales have always got to have something a bit scary for children - as long as you make them laugh as well.

There is heat in freezing...be a testament!