We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.

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.

Great minds think alike-especially when they are female.

Indeed, I find that distance lends perspective and I often write better of a place when I am some distance from it. One can be so overwhelmed by the forest as to miss seeing the trees.

I don't envy the job of people who have to watch five movies a day - that's insane.

Sometimes being afraid can show more strength than being fearless.

It's not the innocent young things that need gentle handling--it's the ones that have been frightened and hurt.

I think that fortune watcheth o'er our lives, surer than we. But well said: he who strives will find his goals strive for him equally.

I'm not predicting; I just love playing with superconductors.

I do think that there is an almost more old fashioned mentality to the way musical theatre people and actresses especially are treated.

In the town of Bethlehem many years ago, a man got religion and he changed the status quo.