Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.

New York is a wonderful place to be up, an awful place to be down.

I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.

There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.

It is not enough just to identify a problem; there are plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted.

Do not take on a traditionally built person unless you are prepared for a heavyweight bout.

And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.