This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

A poem is a frozen momentmelted by each reader for themselvesto flow into the here and now.

Be careful who you trust, the devil was once an angel.

God's finger touched him and he slept.

Man cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.

Meanwhile, the meek are a long time inheriting the earth.

Please. If you were mostly dead in the middle of the road I'd obviously stop. And then I'd watch you die." Kate to Will

If you don't drink coffee, I am suspicious of your character and will not invite you to my Italian lake home.

If we give the bureaucrats our children, we may as well give them everything else.

The acclaim for Razorhurst means even more to me than usual because, let's be honest, Razorhurst is weird.

Some wish that I was gone, cause they know I'ma win.