The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

The plans of your enemies against you mean absolutely nothing since God is already busy creating a great future for you.

I'm ugly, I'm overweight, but I'm happy

We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends behave to us

Light cannot be chained.

You gotta learn how to take a compliment, because I'm not going to stop making them.

No mortal ever has been, no mortal ever will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life.

What fools people are when they think they can make two lives belong together by saying words over them.

Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.

I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me, until the last small twig has grown.

If you look in real life, it is very hard to describe people as good people, bad people, heroes or villains. People aren't bad people. They all have their justifications.