As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.

I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.

A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as difficult to write as a work of fiction, but it's not as satisfying in the end.

A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.

A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two

It is when you are angry that you must watch how you talk.

Seeds must be sown everywhere. Only some will bear fruit. But there would not be the fruit from the few had the many not been sown