No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned.

It is said the sesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

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.

I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.

You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person.