Words are sacred. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge the world a little.

I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.

The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

Every age thinks it's the modern age, but this one really is. Electricity is going to change everything. Everything!

I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism.

Sometimes people are so close to the material, they miss an important cross-reference. You can't drop this line because half an hour later, it affects that line. And the writer is the person who knows that immediately.