I have no wisdom and nothing useful to tell you - I only mentioned this because it came into my head.

Me, what's that after all? An arbitrary limitation of being bounded by the people before and after and on either side. Where they leave off I begin, and vice versa.

Words have a life; without response they die.

The Zoo is a prison for animals who have been sentenced without trial and I feel guilty because I do nothing about it. But there it was, I wanted to see an oyster-catcher and I was no better than the people who'd caged oyster-catchers for me to see.

Language is an archaeological vehicle... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.

The things that matter don't necessarily make sense.

When I write a book, I don't have a plan or an outline. The characters move the action, and the action develops the characters. When I write a book, I become an actor, really, taking the role of the person who is speaking or acting at the time, and so their reactions to whatever they see are my reactions.