Orr had a tendency to assume that people knew what they were doing, perhaps because he generally assumed that he did not.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.

To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.