If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive.

Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those young people don't have to find out by trial and error.

Anaesthesia, that's one technique: if it hurts, invent a different pain.

For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.

In the animal world individuals cheat, as do we.

It's a critical fallacy of our times ... that a writer should 'grow,' 'change,' or 'develop.' This fallacy causes us to expect from children or radishes: 'grow,' or there's something wrong with you. But writers are not radishes. If you look at what most writers actually do, it resembles a theme with variations more than it does the popular notion of growth.

More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?