Think of this- that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

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.

So-called Chinese art and culture is under control of the Party. They exist to serve the official agenda. I call it fake art and culture.

The wheel was invented so we could move faster. Credit was invented so we would have to.

Growing up, I absolutely loved skateboarding and dirt bike riding with my brother and the neighborhood kids.

I did try fillers once. Don't ever have fillers because when your cheekbones are high, it's chipmunk time.

Christianity was preached by ignorant men and believed by servants, and that is why it resembles nothing ever known.

With The Nightingale, I had been kicking the idea around for years. I was frightened to write it because on the surface it seems so different for me.

There is a very personal price to public humiliation, and the growth of the Internet has jacked up that price.

Oh, to be a center fielder, a center fielder- and nothing more

As we grow as unique persons, we learn to respect the uniqueness of others.

I'm very careful about how I portray violence in my films. I do believe that violence, especially violent video games, are not a good thing for young kids.