In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said "It is the trade entering his body.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

Get to work. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened.

The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.

Now the thing is no longer a vision: it is paper.

I'm sure the other kids wouldn't mind not being lectured by another toddler over the virtues of sharing and the mental benefits of toy blocks.

What we do for each other before marriage is no indication of what we will do after marriage.

Even now we can draw back. But once we cross that little bridge we must settle things by the sword.

I've been tiny since I was four, and I eat whatever I want.

I don't like celebrity programmes - but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

The fruit of the Spirit wasn't intended to be a list of goals for us to produce - it is the Holy Spirit through us who produces fruit.

There will always be a Beach Boys. Being a Beach Boy is like being in love

He who blushes is already guilty.

His last thought was that it hadn't been stupidity that had allowed his son to enchant him so easily with words. It had been love.

Too much of this book knowledge just leads to doubts and confusion. You get too many doubts asking 'what is this?' and 'what is that?', and you waste a lot of time in this conflict.