Where would we be without inhibitions? Theyre quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them..

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful..

Young girls are sad. They like to be; it makes them feel strong..

You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surp….

Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs..

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not..

It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark..

Cyclists. I really hate them. I wish they would not be so self-righteous and realise they are a danger to pedestrians. I wish cyclists would not vind….

...it is not possible to create the opposite of what one has always known, simply because the opposite is believed to be desired. Human beings need w….

I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self the more you do..

Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm..

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude..

I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has..

I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently..

Everything is surprising, rightly seen..

Independent women must expect more of themselves, since neither men nor other more conventionally domesticated women will hope for anything, or expec….

A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows "This is I." An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, "This is not I." Maud….

The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his e….

An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream..

I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred..

In my mind's eye Shakespeare is a huge, hot sea-beast, with fire in his veins and ice on his claws and inscrutable eyes, who looks like an inchoate h….