Never use five words if you can get away with one, eh? I've known dead men talk more than you do.

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

I hope you'll make mistakes. If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something.

For me, the glory of my first 25 years as a writer was I could put things off as long as I wanted.

I wish being a beekeeper, which I am, gave you a free pass on the carbon footprint, but it doesn't.

The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.

Everything here is so weak, little girl. Everything breaks so easily. They want such simple things.

I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.

If there's one thing that a study of history has taught us, it is that things can always get worse.

I watch my heart disappearing into her rosebud mouth. My Valentine's jest somehow seems less funny.

You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.

I kept starting 'Anansi Boys' as a movie and stopping, and eventually wrote the novel and was happy.

Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it.

I sat in the dark and thought: There’s no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.

You could fire a machine gun randomly through the pages of Lord of the Rings and never hit any women.

Children, as I have said, use back ways and hidden paths, while adults take roads and official paths.

And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

The real world has no obligation to be convincing, so it throws up some very weird moments sometimes.

Be boring, knowing everything. You have to give all that stuff up if you're going to muck about here.

Actually I didn't shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but he could tell I was extremely cross.

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyways.

We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.

Anyone who calls you "little lady" has already excluded you from the set of people worth listening to.

We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable.

What I'd love to do is every now and then go, 'Oh my God, I've got this amazing idea for 'Doctor Who.'

I don't think you should ever insult people unintentionally: if you're doing it, you ought to mean it.

There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that, but you are the only you.

The ties of blood," said Spider, "are stronger than water." Water's not strong," objected Fat Charlie.

[I spent] much of my time reminding Matt Groening that I really need to be a head in a jar on Futurama.

And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristan Thorn traveled beyond the fields we know.

Stories are made up by people who make them up. If they work, they get retold. There's the magic of it.

You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it.

This is a roadside attraction,' said Wednesday. 'One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power.

As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.

The best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming.

The only advice I can give you is what you're telling yourself. Only, maybe you're too scared to listen.

I think there should be an Occupy Gallifrey. Because 0.000001% of the people have 99.99999% of the Time.

Is there any person in the world who does not dream? Who does not contain within them worlds unimagined?

There are a number of paths that lead to this place. I have been avoiding them for some small time, now.

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.

What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?

You’re alive. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything.

We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories.

Truly, life is wasted on the living, Nobody Owens. For one of us is too foolish to live, and it is not I.

You don't get heaven or hell. Do you know the only reward you get for being Batman? You get to be Batman.

And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.

I think...that I would rather recollect a life mis-spent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt.

You're brave. You are the bravest person I know, and you are my friend. I don't care if you are imaginary.

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