You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

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

It takes long practice, yes. You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have it as a gift? What is worth having is worth working for.

I don't profess any religion; I don't think it's possible that there is a God.... My books are about killing God.

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

Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.