“I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.”

“Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to lea...”

“How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another”

“It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.”

“One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.”

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by so...”

“I say, indeed: "consolation in the nonsentience of nature." For nonsentience is consoling; the world of nonsentience is the world outside human life; it is eternity; "it is the sea gone off with th...”

“We could visit him," suggests Will. "But what would we say? 'I didn't know you that well, but I'm sorry you got stabbed in the eye'?”

“Philosophers console themselves with explanations.”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”