I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.

And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can’t see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they’re scared.

When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.

I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I do not tell lie.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.

Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to deal with them in real life.

The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.