Make this the golden rule, the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: Everything we ask a child to do should be worth doing.

You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else does.

When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.

The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing.

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.

There will be days when the stuff is not flowing freely. What you do then is MAKE IT UP!

The book is second only to the wheel as the best piece of technology human beings have ever invented. A book symbolises the whole intellectual history of mankind; it's the greatest weapon ever devised in the war against stupidity.