In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early...

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation… Stories can conquer...

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...

This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories....

We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see...

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you.

We are victims of censorship within when we do not let ourselves think the thoughts which our flesh recoils from, or let conscience speak that which the heart feels to be unacceptable, or when we...

The highest kind of writing—which must not be confused withthe most ambitious kind…belongs to the realm of grace. Talent ispart of it, certainly; a thorough understanding of the secret laws,absolutely. But finding the subject and...

The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.

I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of...

Understanding is a pure glass of water. All great truths have no taste. Hints of sweetness are coloured by the need for amazement.

Strange things are happening to us.’‘To our children.’‘They sayhe is looking for the spirit of Independence.’‘They say he is looking for himself.’‘For his ownspirit.’‘Which he lost when the white man came.

Knowledge of self ought to be the great project of our lives. Knowing ourselves we will know others. Only by knowing ourselves can we begin to undo the madness we unleash on the world in...