“Ideas are the most fragile things in the world, and if you do not write them down, they will be lost forever.”

“The most I can ever do is write things down. To remember them. The details. To honor them in some way.”

“If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write. If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all. Wait for them. Put down little ideas no matter how insignificant they are. But do not feel, any more, guilty about idleness and solitude.”

“The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still other things have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any this.”

“Write down 10 things you would do in your life if you had absolutely no fear. Then pick one of them and do it.”

“But stories are fragile. Like people's lives. It only takes a word out of place to change them forever. If you hear a lovely tune, and then you change it, the new tune might be lovely too, but you've lost the first one." "But if I stick to the first tune, then I've lost the second." "But someone else might discover it. It's still there to be born." "And the first tune isn't?" "No," Tallis insisted, although she was confused now. "It has already come into your mind. It's lost forever." "Nothing is lost forever," Mr. Williams said quietly. "Everything I've known I still know, only sometimes I don't know that I know it." All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them. "My grandfather said something like that to me," Tallis whispered. "Well there you are. Wise Old Men, one and all…”