What is more yours than what always holds you back?

Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean.

Nothing important comes with instructions.

The best way to know your faults is to notice which ones you accuse others of.

Writing is like washing windows in the sun. With every attempt to perfect clarity, you make a new smear.

When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing.

Sophistication is upscale conformity.

The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.

It is the empty seats that listen most raptly.

All work is the avoidance of harder work.

Tyranny and fantasy both like to write everyone else's lines.

The world after a war is a good world, I told myself. A happy world. A secure world. In this world, I might do anything.

And being here like this, so suddenly close to him is enough to make her lightheaded. It's a feeling like falling.

Because you’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.

I support British designers as much as I can.

Scheherezade is easy; a little black dress is difficult.

The Patron of true Holinesse, Foule Errour doth defeate: Hypocrisie him to entrappe, Doth to his home entreate.

Only God can move mountains, but faith and prayer can move God

People know that pursuing a mission without achieving results is dispiriting; achieving results without a mission is meaningless.

I thought if Oasis could get away with sounding like The Beatles, I could get away with sounding like Abba.

By the year 2000 we will undoubtedly have a sizable operation on the Moon, we will have achieved a manned Mars landing and it's entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer planets.