This is my moral. Trust what you dream. Not what you think.

Lunatics are writers whose works write them, Bat.” “Not all lunatics are writers, Mrs. Rey-believe me.” “But most writers are lunatics, Bat-believe me. The human world is made up of stories, not people.

We—by whom I mean anyone over sixty—commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts,...

At certain rare moments, a library is a kind of mind.

Bunlardan nasıl bir ahlak dersi çıkarmalı? Barış, Rabbimiz tarafından ne kadar sevilse de, ancak komşularınız da sizin gibi vicdanlıysa esas erdemlerden biri sayılır.

natural” (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?Why? Because of this:—one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual,...

It’s a very special talent that men have, to possess seeing eyes yet be so blind.

Probably in a parallel universe not far from here, I’m working for Nintendo.

Such narrative arcs make good movies but shitty existences.

…it’s not just the person who fills a house, it’s their I’ll be back later!s, their toothbrushes and unused hats and coats, their belongingnesses.

Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.

As for reading, I wish I had a magic door to a library where I could go in, read for days and days, and come back in the same minute I left. I’m still looking...

El poder, el tiempo, la gravedad, el amor. Las fuerzas que de verdad mueven el cotarro son invisibles.

To implant belief . . . is to dominate the believers.

The clock’s pendulum catches the firelight, and in the rattle-breathed final moments of Jacob de Zoet, amber shadows in the far corner coagulate into a woman’s form. She slips between the bigger, taller onlookers unnoticed...

He thinks of the all steps that gathered this party and marvels at the weaverless looms of fortune.

…I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I hear my father-in-law’s response: ‘Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don’t...

People pontificate, “Suicide is selfishness.” Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame,...

A volley of hailstones began abruptly, filled the woods with a frenzied percussion & ended on the sudden.

But you have read Madame Bovary?’ (I’d never heard of her books.) ‘No.

To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none....

When you write it, don’t write it in the manner of a spooky story. Don’t try to give an explanation. Just say that I don’t know what to make of it, just write it like...

Hay tantas verdades como hombres. De vez en cuando, alcanzo a vislumbrar una Verdad más verdadera, escondida entre simulacros imperfectos de sí misma, pero en cuanto me acerco, se agita y se hunde más todavía...

If consumers found fulfillment at any meaningful level, she extemporized, corpocracy would be finished.

Pain is strong, aye – but friends’ eyes, more strong.” I told him that he knows next to nothing about me & I know nothing about him. He jabbed at his eyes & jabbed at...

I find a certain comfort,” confesses Marinus, “in humanity’s helplessness.

Men marry women hoping they’ll never change. Women marry men hoping they will.

For most digital-age writers, writing is rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste, and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucketloads of crap. Our analog ancestors had to polish every line mentally before hammering it...

Every nowhere is somewhere[…]

Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone’ll discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of...

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one’s core.

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s...

Pues yo me hago tres preguntas muy simples: ,Cómo ha obtenido ese poder? ,Cómo lo está utilizando? Y: ,cómo se le puede arrebatar al muy hijo de puta?

Scholars discern motions of history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules, only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes?...

I think about pinball, and how being a kid’s like being shot up the firing lane and there’s no veering left or right; you’re just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like...

Laughter is an anarchic blasphemy. Tyrants are wise to fear it.

On bad days you wonder, ‘Why not just back off from the war and lead a quiet metalife?

Go on, my dear,” urges the snake. “Take one. Hear it? ‘Pluck me,’ it’s saying. That big, shiny red one. ‘Pluck me, pluck me now and pluck me hard.’ You know you want to.””But God,”...

Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden.

The art teacher’s scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. ‘As the title suggests,’ Mr Dunwoody saw the book’d caught my attention, ‘it’s about the history of opticians. What are you...

Life’s more science-fictiony by the day.

Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don’t respect cowards.

La segunda ley de la supervivencia afirma que no existe una segunda ley. O comes o te comen. Punto.

I’d always worried but kissing’s not so tricky. Your lips know what to do, just like sea anenomes know what to do. Kissing spins you, like Flying Tea-Cups. Oxygen the girl breathes out, you breathe...

Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people’s women who pay the most.

I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our civilizing world, manifests Himself not in the miracles of biblical age, but in progress. It is progress that leads humanity up the ladder towards the God-head....

A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.

A writer flirts with schizophrenia, nurtures synaesthesia, and embraces obsessive-compulsive disorder. Your art feeds on you, your soul, and, yes, to a degree, your sanity. Writing novels worth reading will bugger up your mind, jeopardise...

… but it is attitude, not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead, or else proffers salvation. In the domain of the young there dwells many an Undead soul. They rush about...

…if you bare your arse to a vengeful unicorn, the number of possible outcomes dwindles to one.