Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.

This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie.

Just about everybody has written a first novel that they throw away before writing their actual first novel.

Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.

But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not. We can ask for someone who will say, “You are noble enough,” and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt.

The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up. Like a tie at a tag sale, some perfect thing in a crate of nothing, you were just there, uninvited, and now suddenly the party was over and you were all I wanted. I hadn't even been looking, not for you, and now you were my heart's desire.

They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.