What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.

After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies.

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination

In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.

The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

Traveling is seeing; it is the implicit that we travel by.

Make people feel great when they feel small. Make them feel responsible when they feel great.

Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are not favorable enough.

The most difficult lesson is not being bitter—that balancing you need to do so you don't become bitter, even as you cease being gullible.

Once again I must ask too much of you, Harry.

I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe

Music was the first thing I did where I was naturally talented.

The real achiever do one thing at a time.

When Alan Rickman, a dear friend of mine, played villains, he always made it complicated. He didn't redeem what they did, but he made you feel that it was hard for them to be so horrible.

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

It's that kind of in-born music thing - I could pick up the guitar and play something. It's not something I consciously do.