Truth is a matter of the imagination.

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

If you're a fiction writer, though, I can tell you how to let people talk through you. Listen. Just be quiet, and listen. Let the character talk. Don't censor, don't control. Listen, and write.

What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.

If your voice is heard by more people because you've earned some kind of name and fame, your silence on an issue of urgent moral importance is even more of a betrayal. Privilege is obligation.

Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him.

To learn a belief without the belief is to sing a song without the tune.