I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one's self a fool.
I find the constraints of drama actually freeing: It brings everything down to character and action.
“A living poem” had always been the words that came to mind when he tried to describe her to others.
I know that somehow, every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step towards finding you.
If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it.
Yet I have come to believe that while the past is unchangeable, our perceptions of is are malleable.
That's good. And speaking of spelling, tell me -- do you wrap your head in a towel after you shower?
You could have told me earlier.” “You seemed so serious about the game. I didn’t want to bother you.
I consider myself foremost a novelist with the intent of crafting stories that people will remember.
Dads are the appendix of humanity. They should just be taken out before they start causing problems.
…I've had a bad week." What's happened?" Nothing's happened. I've had a bad week in my head, is all.
If adults are not enjoying something they're doing in their leisure time, they should stop doing it.
The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world.
Great sex is apocalyptic. There is no such thing as great sex unless you have an apocalyptic moment.
The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.
I see Turkey's future as being in Europe, as one of many prosperous, tolerant, democratic countries.
Sometimes you have to trust people enough to let them succeed and love them enough to let them fail.
Charity is a flower not naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise of profit.
To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is – in other words, not a thing, but a think.
Not a word that I have written about Yugoslavia is denounceable, not a single one. It is literature.
I wouldn't say I'm a religious person, but I am definitely inclined toward asking the big questions.
Something happened to me when I wrote female characters in my early plays; it was a real liberation.
A novel is challenging, because you have more story than you need and you have to select and narrow.
Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.
How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?
She was kind of girl who'd eat all your cashews and leave you with nothing but peanuts and filberts.
If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.
Nice: meaning I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them - to you.
A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times.
I certainly think that 10 to 20 years from now, clearly the majority of veterinarians will be women.
Every really good book was written a little at a time, over time, in tremendous confusion and doubt.
Shakespeare was completely fictionalising the people who were then the great celebrities of English.
Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces.
I've come a long way to get nowhere at all, I thought. And I've spent everything I have to get here.
We must always look after our friends, even when they are foolish. Especially when they are foolish.
You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.
I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.
I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.
A man lies upon the floor, spreads his arms, and transforms himself into a ship of a thousand sails.
The secret of life', he said, 'is to become very very good at somethin' that's very very 'ard to do.
What a fortunate fellow I am, I kept telling myself. Nobody has ever had such a lovely time as this!
In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.
Friends: People who know you well, but like you anyway. The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.
It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
Too many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.
He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.