“I control the world so long as I can name it. Which is why children must chase language before they do anything else, tame the wilderness by describing it, challenge God by learning His hundred names.”

“We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum in...”

“I never told her the other story, in which she stars, in which she is always the heroine a romanticized story full of clich images in which I am telling her all the things there has not been enoug...”

“Children are infinitely credulous. My Lisa was a dull child, but even so she came up with things that pleased and startled me. 'Are there dragons?' she asked. I said that there were not. 'Have ther...”

“The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.”

“The question is, shall it or shall it not be linear history. I've always thought a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresey. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me...”

“No matter what gifts you have, practice is the only way to get better at anything."If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery it would not seem so wonderful at all - Michael Angelo”

“You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle”

“Time is a precious gift.”

“A real treasure becomes such only after it's been desperately sought after.”

“I have no other possessions of value but my soul.”

“What was best for Charlotte? The answer was obvious. And for once he needed to overcome his selfish desires. "Go home, Charlotte." "So thats it?" She straightened, her lovely pride stiffening her f...”

“-'What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?'There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter”