Some Excerpts

I don’t reckon it’s allowed, going round setting fire to people. Otherwise, people’d be doin’ it all the time.

That's sexism, that is. Going around giving people girly presents just because they're a girl.

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

Human beings mostly aren’t [evil]. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie dye jeans and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed and a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.

Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good when they were freshly-picked and raw, and put them in tin cans, and make them revolting.

Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.

Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.

Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don't. I don't. People are much more complicated than that. It's true of everybody.

Why didn't adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?

I knew enough about adults to know that if I did tell them what happened, I would not be believed. Adults rarely seemed to believe me when I told the truth anyway. Why would they believe me about something so unlikely?

Books were safer than other people.

I wonder if there will ever be an 'off the grid' airline? Maybe I'll finally get to Burning Man and pitch that idea to some Silicon Valley types.

That movie couldn’t be made today, because Clarence would’ve just told Jimmy Stewart, ‘There’s medication for what you’re going through, George Bailey.’

Every person is unique and one of a kind and it's that way intentionally. Every person evokes an emotion inside you.

Life is too important to be taken seriously. That’s an Oscar Wilde quote and it’s on one of my coffee mugs so it’s easy to remember.

When people say ‘I’m not really a dog person,’ all I hear is ‘I’m not really a person.’

I don't trust people who don't like dogs but I trust dogs who don't like people.