“Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down.” – Mrs. Brown”

I prefer to remain anomalous.

To think is not always to see.

There are some who’d hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think’s been too lucky.

A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.

Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don’t know.

Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need

Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I’m concerned that’s like accusing a dog of having a bark!

Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.

Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It’s peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.

I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.

Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.

Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on.

Without arts programmes there’s only reality TV, and reality TV needs the arts to show it what reality is.

I think we need to go straight at the fossil fuel industry.

You look at the states [Barack] Obama won and wonder, well, where would Hillary Clinton have a problem and where does Donald Trump have problems?

A woman who has style doesn’t necessarily need designers – designer wear. A woman who has style can put on any frock or dress or pant or whatever and still bring something to it.

What we need is a gigantic, messy community conversation about what is teaching and learning for the 21st century. We need to engage communities.

We need to be willing to stand up and speak up for what we believe.

But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

I’ve been lucky, I’ve had movies that made a lot of money, so I don’t feel like I have to kill every time out. I don’t want that pressure. I don’t need it.