I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.

One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.

...it is not possible to create the opposite of what one has always known, simply because the opposite is believed to be desired. Human beings need what they already know, even horrors.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.

Literary critics make natural detectives.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.