I believe we're all in denial about the people we love.
Time's arrow, we are told, is a one-way thing. . . Memory's arrow, like the needle of a compass too close to a lodestone, spins in all directions.
There must be a lot of people in the world being wondered about by people who don't see them anymore.
Language is an archaeological vehicle. . . the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.
After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?
When I write a book, I don't have a plan or an outline. The characters move the action, and the action develops the characters. When I write a book, I become an actor, really, taking the role of the person who is speaking or acting at the time, and so their reactions to whatever they see are my reactions.
What a weird thing smoking is and I can't stop it. I feel cosy, have a sense of well-being when I'm smoking, poisoning myself, killing myself slowly. Not so slowly maybe. I have all kinds of pains I don't want to know about and I know that's what they're from. But when I don't smoke I scarcely feel as if I'm living. I don't feel as if I'm living unless I'm killing myself.
As a church we must love Jesus, or else we have lost our reason for existence.
I'll commit suicide before I vote on a clean minimum-wage bill.
The secret is to moisturize the face. I've been doing that since I was 17 years old. (on looking young)
Today we are in a situation in which the free movement of people can have enormous, monumental dimensions, and I don't think that any country in Western Europe or in America can any longer adopt the idea of totally free movement of people. I t would simply overwhelm their social facilities, their societies and create migratory dynamics on the scales of tens and tens of millions of people. That simply is not practical.