Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child

Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than quarks, quasars, big bangs and black holes.

I've got no interest in educating or instructing people.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.

Give us this day our daily mask.

...reality, the name we give to the common experience.