This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.

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.

When all comes to all, the most precious element in life is wonder. Love is a great emotion, and power is power. But both love and power are based on wonder.

Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.

I would not give my first 15 years to my worst enemy, and I don't even have a worst enemy.

If I start writing a song and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.

Phychical pain is more easily borne than physical; and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.

Money, make money; by honest means if you can; if not, by any means make money. [Lat., Rem facias rem, Recte si possis, si non, quocumque modo rem.]

If two or three agree on a common purpose, nothing is impossible.

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.

Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to.

Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.