“Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.”

I want my books to sell, to be read. I’m not interested in being obscure.

God save us from people who mean well.

My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond?

I am certainly not allergic to causes – particularly on subjects such as religious intolerance.

Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.

Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.

In a painting, you can’t make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist’s stroke.

For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.

I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.

I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.

You can talk good ideas out of existence.

God save us from people who mean well.

I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.

The past is the past, and he can’t make amends, only hope that the gain will outlast the damage.

You are the gull, Jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.

I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way. But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow And ne’er a word said she; But oh, the things I learned from her When Sorrow walked with me!

Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you.

If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you.

The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don’t give a damn.

In the books I read the sinners are always more interesting than the saints, and in real life good people are dismally dull. I’ve no desire to be wicked, but I do want to be happy. A short life and a gay one for me and I’m willing to pay for my pleasure if it is necessary.

One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.