There is no substitute for time. Giving time is giving life to others.

Infinite players die. Since the boundaries of death are always part of the play, the infinite player does not die at the end of the play, but in the course of play.

What can be explained can also be predicted, if one knows the initial events and the laws covering their succession.

For the finite player in us freedom is a function of time. We must have the time to be free. For the infinite player in us time is a function of freedom. We are free to have time. A finite player puts play into time. An infinite player puts time into play.

The vital power of an imaginative work demands a diversity within its unity; and the stronger the diversity, the more massive the unity. Incidentally, this is the weakness of most "edifying" or "propaganda" literature. There is no diversity. The Energy is active only in one part of the whole, and in consequence the wholeness is destroyed and the Power diminished. You cannot, in fact, give God His due without giving the devil his due also.

I wanted it all to be wonderful for you.' She waited for him to find his own answer to this, which he did with disarming swiftness. 'That's vanity, I suppose. Take pen and ink and write it down. His lordship is in the enjoyment of very low spirits, owing to his inexplicable inability to bend Providence to his own designs.

If you were foolish enough to sing all summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter.

Forbear harping on what was of yore, for it is the common lot of mortals to sustain the ups and downs of fortune.

I do genuinely believe that the political system is not linear. When it reaches a tipping point fashioned by a critical mass of opinion, the slow pace of change we're used to will no longer be the norm. I see a lot of signs every day that we're moving closer and closer to that tipping point.

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

I was really nervous working with actors, since I come from a photography background.

I've written six novels and four pieces of nonfiction, so I don't really have a genre these days.