The trouble with you, Vic," he said, "is that you think of the world as a sort of huge museum with too many visitors allowed in.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

The most dangerous thing to the USA population is not North Korea, it is the USA government.

If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.

Writing calls on unused muscles and involves solitude and immobility.

The fact that the apes exist and that we can study them is extremely important and makes us reflect on ourselves and our human nature. In that sense alone, you need to protect the apes.

It is hard to give up what you know for what you don’t know.

If the press see you looking normal they can suddenly be 'oh, she's got a spot on her face, she's having a bad day'. That can be quite cruel.

Oh swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher's chorus-note Soft moves the dipping oar.

America is a nation fundamentally ambivalent about its children, often afraid of its children, and frequently punitive toward its children.

I wish friends held hands more often, like the children I see on the streets sometimes. I'm not sure why we have to grow up and get embarrassed about it.

George Jones was my friend and I loved him.