I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.

Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. Beautiful in the concept, if we're lucky, but frequently tedious or regrettable as we flesh ourselves out.

I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.

When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis, those who are the most themselves are the victims.

I never write a book unless I can't help it. Something has to bother me, like a mosquito, until I have to do something to relieve the itch.

Science, my dears, is the systematic dissection of nature, to reduce it to working parts that more or less obey universal laws. Sorcery moves in the opposite direction. It doesn't rend, it repairs. It is synthesis rather than analysis. It builds anew rather than revealing the old. In the hands of someone truly skilled,...it is Art.

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.