When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

I am unlikely to trust a sentence that comes easily.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

You need to do research, to approach the study of the issue from all sides

the more he learned, the more he realized that there is too much to learn in anyone’s lifetime.

I love Christmas, not just because of the presents but because of all the decorations and lights and the warmth of the season.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

I gave my parole once, and it has been shamefully violated by the British Government; I shall not give another to people on whom no faith can be reposed.

Ideas that change business models and that can make money are the most threatening, outside actual religion.

Republic. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling.

Well does he sleep who knows not that his sleep has been broken.

The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.

Cherish every season of life; for without coldness, there is no comfort in warmth, and without darker days, there is no joy in light.