What this world doesn't have is the three-wishes, go-to-the-ball-and-meet-your-prince, happily-ever-after kind of magic. We have all the mangling and malevolent kinds. Who *invented* this system?

The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.

I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?

The Lone Ranger of vampires. Did that make me Tonto?

Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.

I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.

Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you.Can I trust him?What do I have to lose?

You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.

The most serious drawback to the telling-nothing approach is that it made that much more of a mystery of what had happened, and the nature of gossip abhors a vacuum of the unexplained.

When you're feeding the second coachload of tourists that day you aren't thinking about the birthday party for fifty next week.

There are always cats around Charlie's, but they are usually refugees seeking asylum from the local rat population, and rather desperately friendly.

It is not about whether you have free will, rather it is about whether you have enough experience to make the best possible wilful decision in the current moment of life.

A Christian's mindset should be a victorious mentality

At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings.

I like shooting things in single takes. You have to rely on the idea itself to carry the full weight; you're always watching the idea, not the filmmaking.

I hate being in Los Angeles when it's football season. I want to be in New York. It just doesn't feel right if I'm away.

What matters are those ordinary acts of kindness and of love, not vaulting ambition with its attendant hubris and smugness.

By doing good, we do well.

Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.

Language is called the garment of thought: however, it should rather be, language is the flesh-garment, the body, of thought.

Take a person’s memories, and you change who they are.