I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear.

Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby - awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.

Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.

...in life it is often the tiny details that end up being the most important.

Like most writers, I look back on all of my finished works with utter regret, and the trouble with writing a series of novels is that you have to go back and read them, and make sure that you haven't forgotten anything you've created, and then when you do that, you're faced with your own mistakes on every trick, from the wrong word in places to entirely the wrong incident.

It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety.

One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.