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

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.

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.

I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I’m enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.

In life’s brief game to be a winner A man must have; oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.

I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.

I think the most difficult part is being patient for good work to come. Sometimes, you feel like giving up if things don’t materialise in a short period of time.

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.

I’ve started doing yoga and meditation, but I’m not very good at that kind of thing and turning my brain off.

In the family, happiness is in the ratio in which each is serving the others, seeking one another’s good, and bearing one another’s burdens.

I’m not as good a swimmer as I used to be – thanks to evolution.

Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people have got to have their faith rewarded.

If you believe Jesus ever had a good word for war or torture or tax cuts for the rich, or raping the earth, or refusing water to dying migrants, then you might as well believe bunnies lay painted eggs.

A man who does not know how to be angry, does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil.