A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die.

It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.

Colours shone with exceptional clarity in the rain. The ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, the people wrapped in yellow looking like special spirits that were allowed to wander over the earth on rainy mornings only.

The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. ... [But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

One of these days they'll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.

A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.