“The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.”

“It doesn't matter if the glass is half full or half empty. I am gonna drink it through this crazy straw.”

“Every person is born into life as a blank page and every person leaves life as a full book.”

“Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?’ enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.‘One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,’ says Sugar. ‘It saves time and paper.’ Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, ‘If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?’Sophie answers without hesitation.‘I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand.”

“One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.”

“People who argue whether the glass is half empty or half full are probably not thirsty.”