The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

Things are not what they seem.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief, but it is belief that is the positive, it is beliefthat sustains thought and holds the world together.

The superman exists and he's American.

The body is the easiest thing to adjust to... It’s the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.

Now that I am moving, I am afraid. Where am I going?

Sleep is easier to make up than a unique evening.

All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.

Rise above... cultivate the light you have within you, and it will shine through as a radiant expression that will be seen by others.

The invalidity of Darwinism and the actuality of creation are scientific facts.

In my idea General Washington is the greatest man; for I look upon him as the most virtuous.

I saw your smile and my mind could not erase the beauty of your face.