“They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?”

I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning. Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it’s always nice to know where you’re going is my theory.

Really being friends is the most important part, I think, of any relationship.

Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can’t have too many friends because then you’re just not really friends.

Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.

It’s better to look at the sky than live there.

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

It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.

How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, 12 hours sleep a night, and lots and lots of make-up.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.

Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc – it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

The most dangerous thing in the world is to make a friend of an Englishman, because he’ll come sleep in your closet rather than spend 10 shillings on a hotel.

Passion is always a mystery and unaccountable, and unfortunately there is no doubt that life does not spare its purest children; often it is just the most deserving people who cannot help loving those that destroy them.

Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself.

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.

Memories -images and precious thoughts that shall not die and cannot be destroyed.

I do not always listen again but if something strikes me, I exploit it.

I will destroy my enemies by converting them to friends.

I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man.