He was a man who knew there were such things as jokes in the world or people would not write about them, but had never actually been introduced to one or shaken its hand.

I read The Great Gatsby. It is one of my favorite books and I had taken it out of the library in hopes that it would cheer me up; of course, it only made me feel worse, since in my own humorless state...

Dorothy L. Sayers used to say that mystery stories were the only moral fiction of the modern world - because in a mystery, you were guaranteed to see that the bad got punished, the good got rewarded...

Sometimes words need music too. Sometimes the descriptions are not enough. Books should be written with soundtracks, like films.

He doesn't need my help coming up with pranks. He's got too many ideas of his own. - Daja referring to Briar in their first year at Discipline cottage

Words are my matter—my stuff. Words are my skein of yarn, my lump of wet clay, my block of uncarved wood.

Narziss was dark and thin of face, and Goldmund open and radiant as a flower. Narziss was a thinker and anatomiser, Goldmund a dreamer and a child. Yet things common to both could bridge these...

Pulling away, I realized I had no place to go and nothing I wanted to do except satisfy my curiosity about a woman who was coming on like gangbusters and a big load of grief.

The next summer we went to France for six weeks, and I added another 420 words, most of them found in the popular gossip magazine, 'Voici'. Man-eater, I'd say. Gold digger, roustabout, louse. Who are...

The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. Add a door, add two windows. Think of putting a tree in the front yard, and then decide against it...

What is it? I ask, opening the folded page. It's an article on your hero, Donald Trump. McDermott grins.

What keeps me interested--and it always does--is how can she be a bad actress on film but a good one in reality?

When you finish reading a book and think to yourself, 'I wish the author was a close friend of mine so I could call him anytime I want and talk,' then that book is truly good.

Is there some vital connection between Norman church architecture and the milking of beef cattle of which I am unaware?

He could be ruined again and again by hope, but he would never be capable of belief.

The exaltation of understanding; then understanding's bottomless regret.

Nothing that had ever happened to him, not the shooting of Oyster, or the piteous muttering expiration of John Wesley Shannenhouse, or the death of his father, or internment of his mother and...

Asshole cunt peepee fuck. Ah, grinned Old Sludge, showing his one tooth, going to the company store to get some algae chewies, huh? Goddamn poopoo, I would grin back at him.

There was also the time that competitors were asked to submit a paragraph of a Graham Greene parody: Greene himself entered under a pseudonym and placed third.

It was not a musical voice, and yet it affected him like music.

Evie's eyes widened. More interesting than dope and sorcery?

I am creating an atmosphere! Oh, Unc, we've finally got bodies in this joint! Paying bodies. We could have a good racket going here. I'm not interested in a 'racket.' I'm an academic. That's okay,...

It is easier to write a book with footnotes than the same book written so that children can understand it.

Did the little girl witness a murder? No. She stole a medal that was worth a suitcase full of money. Ranger raised his eyebrows and grinned. Good for her. I like to see enterprise in kids.

There's always tomorrow. Exactly, she said, finishing off her first doughnut, selecting a second. Maybe she wouldn't starve to death, she decided. Maybe she'd eat herself into obesity and explode....

Pity you can't attach an extra arm to your broom, Malfoy. Then it could catch the Snitch for you.

DELPHI/HERMIONE: What have you done? SCORPIUS/HARRY: I, uh, I opened a book. Something which has - in all my years on this planet - never been a particularly dangerous activity. The

Professor Dumbledore. Can I ask you something? Obviously, you've just done so, Dumbledore smiled. You may ask me one more thing, however. What do you see when you look in the mirror? I? I see myself...

There is nothing so unsatisfactory as an ending with loose ends, this modern tendency to leave books incomplete.

I thought I heard you—one of you—saying it was a pity—a pity I never had any children … eh? … But I have, you know … I have …