Without education … what is man but a splendid slave, a reasoning savage vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God and the degradation of passion participated with brutes…

The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.

If you’re going to give up after few attempts, bear it in mind that your struggles are going to be wasted.

Your language looks like a treasure map, ' she said, 'if you forget all the rest of the letters and focus in on the x, it looks as if you could find out where the treasure is.

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

Everything depends on this: a fathomless sinking into a fathomless nothingness.

My humour and my work ethic definitely come from my Scottish side, and I have to say the sense of humour doesn't really translate when I'm in America.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

If you are not living in joy, you are out of integrity with your soul.

You can always cheat an honest man, but it takes more work.