...and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.

And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

You love someone, you've got to let something go.

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.

From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

I don't want fear or cancer to define me, but it's always in the back of your mind.

When I started the Imagination Library in my hometown, I never dreamed that one day we would be helping Scottish kids.

There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.

Im sometimes mistaken as the wife of the chairman. I just laugh it off.

The problem with getting older is you still remember how things used to be.

I'd like to quit thinking of the present as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.

When chill November's surly blast Made fields and forests bare.

I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday. A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child. It still shows in how I arrange things. It's always little altars.

Every garden-maker should be an artist along his own lines. That is the only possible way to create a garden, irrespective of size or wealth.

if Saint Bruce doesn't like your poem, he chops your head off.