My mother was a great bringer-up of children. My memories are of a sense of security and comfort.

The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.

Happiness quells thought. And work quells thought.

Literature is the voice of the human heart.

People die when curiosity goes.

I can do hieroglyphics in the margin. There are days when I really enjoy the flow of ink. I mean, nice pen, ink straight on to the page.

What we wish upon the future is very often the image of some lost, imagined past.

When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it.

I like the world we've got. If there is anything special and magical, I have to find it in the ordinary stuff.

Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying 'You're mad, you're mad.'

I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary.

Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.

great web design without functionality is like a sports car with no engine.

Why would we need to experience the Comforter if our lives are already comfortable?

If you can remain as an atheist in a falling plane, then it means you are a real atheist!

Living with fear stops us taking risks, and if you don't go out on the branch, you're never going to get the best fruit.

Emerald as heavy as a golf course, ruby as dark as an afterbirth, diamond as white as sun on the sea.

In truth, I'm still slightly embarrassed to say, I am a poet. I'd rather say, I make poems.

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed

...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.