A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‚Why don’t you write your autobiography?‘

Muhammad Ali is a legend, a hero of mine.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

But I think we’re also just talking about the literacy of the audience. The visual literacy of the audience. They’ve seen so many images now, especially here in the States. There’s so much to look at, to watch. So the visual storytelling literacy is harder to impress.

You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don’t go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

In the game of cricket, a hero is a person who respects the game and does not corrupt the game. The one who doesn’t or corrupts the game, they are the villain. They should be punished, and they have been punished in the past.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

In cricket, my superhero is Sachin Tendulkar. He has always been my hero and will continue to remain so. Apart from him and outside cricket, my mother has remained my inspiration. Whatever difficult time I had faced, she was always there for me. She has given me all the strength. She maintained her composure and supported me in tough times.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don’t go there to swim, then those young people don’t have to find out by trial and error.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

Who’s my hero? That’s a great question… Well, I think my dad is my hero, because he’s someone I look up to every day.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

I don’t know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It’s also changing how we’re telling stories.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

When I was a young man, Dirac was my hero. He made a breakthrough, a new method of doing physics. He had the courage to simply guess at the form of an equation, the equation we now call the Dirac equation, and to try to interpret it afterwards.

In whatever adulation you get, there’s truth and there’s not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible – there’s truth and there’s not truth. It’s human nature to like to read the adulation more.

Engineering training deals with the exact sciences. That sort of exactness makes for truth and conscience. It might be good for the world if more men had that sort of mental start in life even if they did not pursue the profession.

Bhai was my hero and he had immense influence on me.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

The lie is a condition of life.

Live truth instead of professing it.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.