Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

to look back on one's life is to experience the capriciousness of memory. ... the past is not static. It can be relived only in memory, and memory is a device for forgetting as well as remembering. It, too, is not immutable. It rediscovers, reinvents, reorganizes. Like a passage of prose it can be revised and repunctuated. To that extent, every autobiography is a work of fiction and every work of fiction an autobiography.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

Every island to a child is a treasure island.

It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.

Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear?