Ignorance and poverty are the best condiments for the great feast of the world, but the inexperienced and poor are never invited to it.

I was very lighthearted. This often the way when the abandonment of personal responsibility is enforced: neither wronged innocence or just guilt can seriously impair the sensation of freedom one has.

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters.

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.

A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse.

And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.