Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.

Despite the hours spent debating different models of general education, the choices faculties make rarely lead to any significant difference in the cognitive development of undergraduates.

What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.

The best social insurance is to make more progress, not to make more work

It is often the case that laws must change before fears about change dissipate.

In the United States, we do a pretty good job of protecting iconic landscapes and postcard views, but the ocean gets no respect.

Mormons know that its not enough to practise your religion - you also have to spread your religion.

That's what reading was for my mother, and became for me - a way to escape, a private time machine, a place that began with moral instruction but soon morphed into empathy and imagination.

Too many members of Congress believe they can solve all economic problems, cure all social ills, and bring about worldwide peace and prosperity simply by creating new federal programs.

The insistence that the commercialisation of the body is a fit subject for political discussion and intervention is well overdue.