“A man’s greatest battles are the ones he fights within himself.”

Don’t despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.

Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.

If you are working in an office, where do you find the time to write a novel? But you can finish a short story in five pages. Furthermore, a short story is a perfect place to learn the craft

When you stop inventing reality then you see things as they really are.

If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.

One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’

When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you’re suffering in.

The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.

Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.

Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train.

Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do.

Creativity is the art of the impossible

If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.

Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.

To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.

An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.

We have a great objective – the light on the hill – which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the Labour movement would not be worth fighting for.

I think I’m aware of what goes on in my mind more than some guys, and for that reason I fight more battles.

Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

We hadn’t lost morale. But when you fight for four quarters, it’s tough to always bounce back. The offense kept us in the game the last two weeks and to get out with a win feels really good.

My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that’s the right song to not fight the lyric.

Gays are beginning to realize what blacks learned long ago: Unless you are out here fighting for yourself then nobody else will help you. I think the gay community has a moral obligation to continue the fight.

We, the women of the Senate, with President Obama by our side, will keep fighting – our shoulders square, our lipstick on – because you deserve equal pay for your hard work.