It's the pool where we all go down to drink, to swim, to catch a little fish from the edge of the shore; it's also the pool where some hardy souls go out in their flimsy wooden boats after the big ones. It is the pool of life, the cup of imagination, and she has an idea that different people see different versions of it, but with two things ever in common: it's always about a mile deep in the Fairy Forest, and it's always sad. Because imagination isn't the only thing this place is about.

Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please.

I never met a writer who wasn't lazy.

But I believe in love, you know; love is a uniquely portable magic. I don’t think it’s in the stars, but I do believe that blood calls to blood and mind calls to mind and heart to heart.

Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism, irony, or musical language, but it seems to me that every book-at least every one worth reading-is about something.

Isn't it too bad that the great truths are all such lies.