A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

Writing reminds you that you're never alone. Writing and reading is to be optimistic.

I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.

The enslavement, humiliation, torture, and ultimate destruction of thousands upon thousands of human beings for a project for which there was ultimately no purpose is a horror that's very hard to imagine, far less understand.

Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul.

I think it's always wrong of writers to make too much of the pains of their labors, because most people have much worse jobs and suffer such indignities and hardships.

The monsters demand less of you as a writer because they're probably closer to who you are.