You must not make the mistake of thinking that because nothing lasts, nothing matters.

We're as ephemeral as raindrops. We all fall, and we all land somewhere.

[There was] only one news channel, overseen by a bland and complexly multicultural board of advisors. It broadcast in fifteen languages and was, as a rule, interesting in none of them.

Nobody wants to conduct an autopsy on a dead saint.

For such people the consummate act of moral clarity was a lynching or a suicide bombing, a fatwa or a pogrom. And they were ascendant now, rising like dark stars over a terminal landscape .

We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father's unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars.

To capture the pawn, threaten the queen.

We're all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we're seldom formally introduced.

I don't believe money is evil, but it can be terribly corrosive.

I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry.

Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere.

Get your knowledge quickly and then use it. If you can use it you will retain it.

Every child is born as a free human being.

For the purpose of pursuit not to be stated is to invite threatening danger

May all your dreams but one come true, for what is life without a dream?

Is it cynical to assume that anyone smiling is a liar and a criminal?

Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.

I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.

Activity in politics also produces eager competition and sharp rivalry.

One of the most important differences I see between prose and poetry is the music of the language.

Love's a weird one, isn't it? I've never told my husband Graham that I love him. He's never told me either. I think it started as a bit of a joke. We just decided never to say it.