“The apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and why we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the peop...”

“Webley Edwards was on the radio, they remember that, and what he said that morning again and again was This is an air raid, take cover, this is the real McCoy. That is not a remarkable thing to say...”

“That we have made a hero of Howard Hughes tells us something interesting about ourselves, something only dimly remembered, tells us that the secret point of money and power in America is neither th...”

“Of course the activistsnot those whose thinking had become rigid, but those whose approach to revolution was imaginatively anarchichad long ago grasped the reality which still eluded the press: we ...”

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justi...”

“I have always paid income tax. I object only when it reaches a stage when I am threatened with having nothing left for my old age - which is due to start next Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“You lie awake at 3 in the morning thinking of story ideas. You're online at 8 a.m. on a Sunday or midnight on a Wednesday. It's a job that you never push aside.”

“I always think if you have to cook once, it should feed you twice. If you're going to make a big chicken and vegetable soup for lunch on Monday, you stick it in the refrigerator and it's also for W...”

“How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on...”

“Some call me nature, others call me Mother Nature. ... How you choose to live each day, whether you regard me or disregard me, doesn't really matter to me. One way or other, your actions will deter...”

“The color has faded out of the sky. It is grey, becoming darker as the world turns herself round a little more. The clouds are long and black and ragged, like the wings of stormbattered dragons.”

“nights and days came and passedand summer and winterand the sun and the windand the rain.and it was good to be a little islanda part of the worldand a world of its ownall surrounded by the bright b...”

“When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters a table leg breaks or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart...”

“A good friend of mine once said, "I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child.”