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

... the most insoluble problems are those which by their very nature can have no space within them for dreams.

How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things.

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

duty, the most indecent of all obsessions, was only another name for love.

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.

Love and hate are cruel, only liking is kind