Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

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.

Life can be awkward at times. It is part of the growing process.

Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.

I think you don't break new ground in anything in life if you are willing to just follow the rules.

The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering.

Your father only has one foot on this earth. And really, really long legs . . .

Who can begin conventional amiability the first thing in the morning?

And when the fog's over and the stars and the moon come out at night it'll be a beautiful sight.

The whole world is there for you. Gifts will happen, but only if you are patient with life itself, the shooting process, and your own limitations.

You do a lot of press, but getting to talk and discuss movies with your peers is the best and most fulfilling part.

We dare not forget, lest we become a nation that does not only not know its roots but where it’s going