“I have always thought that these two ways of talking, one is the fantastic, the fable, the fairy tale, and the other being history, the scholarly study of what happened, I think they’re both amazing ways to understand human nature.”

Friendships are the family we make – not the one we inherit. I’ve always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same.

For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake.

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.

No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.

The only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

I don’t dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don’t want that to be dictated to me either.

Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’

If you’re offended, it’s your problem.

If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.

Darling, our story was a beautifully tragic thing. Magical as it happened unbearable when it ended.

In the end no one comes to saves us, we have to save ourselves -be your own fairytale.

Everyone chases fairytales and magic until love becomes an illusion.

The public wanted a fairy princess to come and touch them and everything would turn to gold. Little did they realise that the individual is crucifying herself inside because she didn’t think she was good enough.

The idea of my life as a fairy tale is itself a fairy tale.

I’d imagine my wedding as a fairy tale… huge, beautiful and white.

I was born an only child in Vienna, Austria. My father found hours to sit by me by the library fire and tell fairy stories.

My soul has painted like the wings of butterflies, Fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die, I can fly, my friends