And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard self-satisfied strength of belief even for that.

Recounting the strange is like telling one's dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream, but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can colour one's entire day.

Everybody who has ever read Sandman knows exactly what the Sandman looks like, which is more than anybody who has ever read The Catcher in the Rye can say about Holden Caufield.

I was the kind of person who knew what he wanted to do; I wanted to write, I wanted not to be in school, and I felt that university would just be spending another four years of my life before I could write.

I hope you'll make mistakes. If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something.

When you die, they can make you into diamonds now. It’s scientific. That’s how I want to be remembered. I want to shine.

I took delight in hurling books across the room if I knew I would not be reading the second chapter. Then I’d go and pick them up again, because they are books, after all, and we are not savages.