we are, in this country, more open to new ideas. But we are also, it seems to me, more inclined to hail the new as absolute truth - until the next new comes along.

When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.

A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.

The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that's the minute you have to stop because from then on it's wrong.

To be human is to be in a story.

Families hold each other in an iron grip of definition. One must break the grip, somehow.

The language of labels is like paper money, issued irresponsibly, with nothing of intrinsic value behind it, that is, with no effort of the intelligence to see, to really apprehend.

Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever guise, are meditations on life.

People steal into one's consciousness and occupy what seems, in retrospect, to have been their place all along.

I was the goldfish that leapt out of the bowl.

Life is all getting used to what you're not used to.

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

What you can do, has nothing to do with your parents' last name! What you can do has nothing to do with the colour of your skin! What you can do is fully determined by God! It’s simple!

Writing out a goal allows us to see it in words. It creates a statement that does not change

Confidence is seen, not heard.

We are responsible for our own destiny. What matters is how we improve ourselves from this moment forward.

Bad television is three things: a bullet train to a morally bankrupt youth, a slow spiral into an intellectual void, and of course, a complete blast to watch.

There have been so many instances in my life where movies, music, or literature has made my life tangibly better.

Don't think of sea as color. Make it a solid that can support a boat. Think of 'wetness' as color-texture.

Love ruined people's lives, the way our parents said drugs could.

The sound when we crash is so loud it's almost impossible.