Everybody believes in chance.

If you're trying to find out what's coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen.

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.

That's one of the many things about having the bookstore that I adore. I can walk into the store and say to somebody, "I'm glad you're reading this book" or "I'm glad you're getting this book" or "Don't get that book. I read that book and hated that book. Let's get you this book instead."

Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.

Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.