When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.

I don't want to be the one to tell somebody, You will not make it, even though I know that the majority of those who come to me with their manuscripts are not really good enough.

I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.

I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write.

If you were to loose the habit of making the effort to get the book and read the words one by one you would have lost something terribly important. So I think that we have a task to ensure that this doesn't happen.

When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?

I know that an important message is not a novel. To say that we should all be kind to our neighbors is an important statement; it's not a novel.