The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.

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.

Personal experiences that disrupt stale routines result in the phenomena of cognitive dissiliency, jolting our minds and enhancing our ability to internalizing new information.

Why die on Mars when you can live in South Dakota? South Dakota, you can live here.

The greatest thing an actor can experience is discovery. The greatest thing an artist can walk away with is to learn something about themselves and the world and this was one of those.

PROMISE YOURSELF To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.

Not all living creatures die. An amoeba, for example, need never die; it need not even, like certain generals, fade away. It just divides and becomes two new amoebas.

Knowledge comes by taking things apart, analysis. But wisdom comes by putting things together.

Conservatism has always been about reforming government and solving problems, and that's why the conservative movement should lead on immigration reform.

The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!

Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'

I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67 and that program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us...