We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.

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.

Sometimes your belief system is really your fears attached to rules.

It's okay to remember, but it's also okay to forget too.

The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose.

Organized religion, wielding power over the community, is antithetical to the process of what modern democracy should define as liberty. The sooner we are without it, the better.

I vaguely remember doing [all my] photo sessions, but definitely there were some surprises there for me.

For people allergic to wool, one's heart can only bleed.

The few really great-the major novelists ... are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.

It's as if we spend our entire lives avoiding Jell-O but it is always there at the end, waiting.

None but the ignorant can be bored by life. To the lovers of learning, life is pure adventure shared with adventurers.

Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?