The stars were so simple when she was a kid, a smattering of glowing dust circling the Earth. She did not then know that each was a sun, most considerably more massive than the daylight one she knew.

Maybe [aliens] have been in our lives a lot longer than we want to admit. People have always seen strange things—elves and fairies—and now we don't. Now we see them, right?

If I can alter my perception of the reality, I can change the reality itself.

If you get enough people believing one thing, it's like reality bends itself to allow that to exist.

They were once fairies and elves. Now they are creatures from beyond the stars because you no longer believe in anything but humans.

The stars glittered through the atmosphere, and he thought of the distances that light must take to hit his eye at exactly that moment. Without him here, those photons would have been wasted.

Please do not say magic like you are discussing a bowel movement... Humanity expects the lights, so they are provided.

You have to surrender yourself to the experience.

Within you, within all human beings, is a seed of greatness that makes their kind quake with fear.

We're not mad, " he began, meaning he was. He was always a plural when mad, as though grammatically throwing his lot in with her mother gave him the power of her authority.

She resented a universe that forced her to fabricate cover stories for its more inexplicable vagaries.

People like us are dead to society unless we’re pretentious, tell people what they want to hear, take off our clothes, or pretend to be like them.

Be grateful for who you are and what you will be.

Freedom, inefficiency, and prosperity are not in it frequently found together, and it is seldom easy to distinguish between the first two.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.

As a matter of fact, I am an uncle. I have nine nephews and nieces. I'm not sure if they think I'm all that quick with a quip. But I'm quick with a spank.

Critics? I love every bone in their heads.

The irony of prison is that it takes years and years and years to plan an elaborate escape, but all you have is years and years and years.

When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don't learn nothing, cause hey, it's not your fault, it's his fault, over there.

Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.