I was no good at being a child.

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.

He did something he rarely did. He decided not to see things from the other guy's point of view.

We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we endured birth. You can’t share either experience.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is in fact a return to the idealized past.

Going gray is like ejaculating: you know it can happen prematurely, but when it does it comes as a total shock.

My sons have such a deep access to my heart.

It is much more beneficial to your health if you feel your way through life than think your way through life.

Well, you know, it's been in the back of my mind. I just cannot get it out of it. I'm miserable chasing money. I'm 30 years old going through a mid-life crisis!" I just couldn't shut (it) off.

Sometimes love not only lifts you to the ceiling, it also keeps your eyes there.

Common sense is strengthened by joy.

I am powerless against the great magazines - I am an artist, and I will always be that.