Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.

I get used to my fountain pens and my clothes, and I can never throw them away. I replace them only when I see that they are broken or embarrassing to wear.

The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.

A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects.

Museums are western inventions where the rich and the powerful or the government and the state tend to exhibit the signs and symbol and images of their culture.

Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?

Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.

Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.

I came across humanity in Istanbul, and all I know about life comes from Istanbul, and definitely, I am writing about Istanbul. I also love the city because I live there, it has formed me, and it's me. Of course it is natural. If somebody lived all his life in Delhi, he will write about Delhi.

Language is me, in a way. Really, I feel it.

I would be pleased if someone would invent a pill to remove my impatience, moodiness, and occasional bursts of anger. But if they did, I wouldn't be able to write my novels or paint.

Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.

My unhappiness protects me from life.

I don't look at emails, Internet or newspapers before 1 P.M. I wake at 7 A.M., eat fruit, drink tea or coffee, and read what I've achieved, or not achieved, the previous day. Then I take a shower and work on my next sentence until 1 P.M. After I've done emails and so on, I write again from 3 P.M. until 8 P.M.; then I socialise.

After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.

My home is attached to a study - in fact, my home is my study, and I have a little room to sleep in. I need to write looking onto the street or a landscape. Looking at reality from some distance gives me romantic visions.

As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them

People only tell lies when there is something they are terribly frightened of losing.

I have the legacy of my father and his nocturnal automatic waking up. But I like those periods. I immediately have a different vision of humanity and my life.

The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience.

If a writer is to tell his own story - tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people - if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art - this craft - he must first have been given some hope.

If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination - that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.

Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty." Gideon Wyeth:"Why?" Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty.

I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first. - Ender

It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.

Remember, the enemy's gate is down.

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.

Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

You're a monster. Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise? No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.

Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.

I also remembered that you were beautiful." "Memory does play tricks on us." "No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore.

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you

So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.