...it is not possible to create the opposite of what one has always known, simply because the opposite is believed to be desired. Human beings need what they already know, even horrors.

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.

You can inspire millions through positivity and live in abundance, I did. Life is great.

Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.

You are not dead, until every person who knew you is dead as well." Where did I hear that? It doesn't matter. There is a village in my head.

Look, the president can discharge all 93 U.S. attorneys for no reason at all, but not for a bad reason.

Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.

I feel that one of the greatest gifts you can give someone is the truth, but sometimes my words will get stuck on the way out.

You have to be prepared for people to hate you. Average people love to be average, because nobody bothers them.

You can take what is handed to you and use it as an excuse to mess up. But I've always handled what was given to me by life. I consider myself lucky. I was never lied to. And I was loved.

I recognize primaries are difficult things. We had a field of outstanding candidates. And primaries get a little bit rough. And it takes some time for people to get beyond those things.

I have the general philosophy of creating the future you want to see.