What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

Things are not what they seem.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

It is only when you suffer that you truly understand.

You can travel the world but If you cannot let go of the past, you will never move on.

Don't you wish it could happen? Your mind wiped clean like a hard drive? Start again without memories?

I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation.

There's always the chance you could die right in the middle of your life story.

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

I was there when God was put on trial....At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than 'guilty'. It means 'He owes us something'. Then we went to pray.

Music is my biggest passion aside from anything else.

The best choices will always be the most loving.

When you're looking to meet someone...you're looking to settle.