“There’s a virtue in slowness, which we have lost.”

People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations.

One has no talent. I have no talent. It’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

As long as nothing happens anything is possible.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.

I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.

It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.

So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.

For whatsoever from one place doth fall, Is with the tide unto an other brought: For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.

But with a sigh he had released her hand, while she was so lost in the fantasy that she hadn’t felt it go away, as if he’d known the best moment to let go.

When I hear a guy lost a battle to cancer, that really did bother me, that that’s a term. It implies that he failed and that somebody else that defeated cancer is heroic and courageous.

All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.

Time lost, as men may see, For nothing may recovered be.

Maybe water is not entirely lost when soaked into sand. Maybe it finds a better resting place to call home; and I hope she did too.

Can hope bloom in the shade? Can time give back what it takes away? I once saw the answers to life in your eyes; now I can remember the words to goodbye.

The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.