I relished the sweet sense of keeping a unique secret in my mind - a wonderful magical universe that I could go to any time, any place, and no one had to know. It was my personal place, better than any I've read about in any other book. And when I wrote, I was in the process of pulling that personal universe out of nothing and into the cold reality of the greater world.

Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire.

Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all.

Justice based purely on laws is about as accurate as a portrait created out of large low-resolution color pixels. If you stand back far enough it looks good. Come any closer and the glaring approximations overtake all semblance of the original. Justice should be viewable under the microscope, not from a telescope. And for that it needs to be based not on law but on truth.

To every rule there is an exception—and an idiot ready to demonstrate it. Don't be the one!

I was forgetting that an artist also just stares at a piece of paper or canvas all day. It somehow never occurred to me to connect these two diverse creative modes.

If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.