You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.

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

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

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.

Quite alone. No voice, no touch, no hand....How long must I lie here? For ever? No, only for a couple of hundred years this time, miss....

We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses

I’ve lost so many people. Some I left on purpose and never looked back. Some were taken from me, and I never said good-bye.

Every investigation which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach.

Let's not only provide a jumpstart to the economy and immediately or save 3 million jobs, but let's also put a down payment on some of the structural problems that we have in our economy.

A saint has to be a misfit. A person who embodies what his culture considers typical or normal cannot be exemplary.

That's the problem with truth. The truth is relentless. It won't leave you alone. It keeps creeping up on you from every side, showing you what's really so. That can he annoying.

In Nigeria, financial services, telecoms, and entertainment have driven growth more than oil.

Make the Universal personal and you become richer, wiser and stronger. Make the personal Universal and you will find freedom, compassion and love