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.

I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.

We have different kinds of intimacy with many, many people. I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.

You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.

Show kindness whenever possible. Show it to the people in front of you, the people coming up behind you, and the people with whom you are running neck and neck. It will vastly improve the quality of your own life, the lives of others, and the state of the world.

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

I decided to make my living as a magazine writer. And I found that it was really easy and fun.