Don't confuse honours with achievement.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

Freddie often fold me that you've got to be happy when you can, because life won't wait for you to take the time. And she was right.

Experiencing life through a book can help you learn without all the pain of going through the experiences first hand.

Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)

I was just in Las Vegas, where prostitution is legal. Which is a relief because I live in Los Angeles, where it is mandatory.

While people judge others from their own moral standpoint, the wise person looks also at the point of view of another.

Anyone who doesn't believe that the forest is a deadly place has never been lost in one.

Gift of time in me enclosed the future suddenly exposed

There are many kinds of delusion.

If you follow every dream, you might get lost.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.