If I had problems, I kept them to myself. I didn't make a scene.

I love telling people what to read. It's my favorite thing in the world, to buy books and force books on people, take bad books away from people, give them better books.

Time is the most extraordinary gift for friendship. You'll get to eat your meals together and study together; in some cases you'll even sleep in the same room. You'll have time to waste on each other. You'll find out every single thing you have in common and still have time to catalogue all of your differences. Don't underestimate the vital necessity of friendship in your life because it is the thing that will sustain you later, when there will be considerably less time.

I love a large cast of characters. That's the way life is: it's flooded with people and we keep them all straight.

Guns are dangerous and damaging even when no one gets shot. They really do loom.

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.

It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.