Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.

And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.

It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

I do not foresee a time when I shall feel that I have nothing to say.

I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.

War has become an affair of machines...and soldiers are little more than clever mechanics.

The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.

My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.

Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.

Man thinks, and at once becomes the master of the beings that do not think.

You make mistakes as a parent. Then you wish you hadn't said that, or you wish you hadn't told them how to dress. You cringe.

When I lose my column again, I'm sure I'll get hungry again. Maybe it's having a kid, but it's probably just getting to do what I always wanted to do - I'm really not that hungry.

I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.

I worked with a lot of different, amazing people, but I was always like, "Dude, I'm sorry, you're going to have to trust me, we've got to do it this way!"

I met The Beatles while we were playing in Germany. We'd seen them in Liverpool, but they were a nothing little band then, just putting it together. In fact, they weren't really a band at all.

Security isn't having things, it's handling things.

I'm afraid I'll lose myself in you, Gideon. I'm scared I'll lose the part of me I worked so hard to get back." "I'd never let that happen." he promised fiercely. Chapter 8, pg 140