Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

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.

Pull himself together? This was a man who looked permanently cemented together.

To a fireman, wind is a curse. To a sailor, wind is a blessing.

Sorry, pigtails, but subtlety isn't an option anymore.

Martina and I went through a very bad five years. Everything's very good between us now, but it was a long haul.

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

The disease of mutual distrust among nations is the bane of modern civilization

There are times in your life when, despite the steel weight of your memories and the sadness that seems to lie at your feet like a shadow, you suddenly and strangely feel perfectly okay.

The bravery of the nonviolent is vastly superior to that of the violent.

Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it.

We don't often look into these unpleasant details of our great struggle. We all prefer to think that every man who wore the blue or gray was a Philip Sidney at heart.