If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do I tell you!

There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.

There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart.

I escaped the torture of my childhood home by reading. To this day it is still one of my greatest pleasures.

My books and other works are my legacy, and it's a great comfort to know that mine is a legacy of pleasure for other people.

That's the purpose of old age... To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens.