Life is that which - pressingly, persistently, unfailingly, imperially - interrupts.

Real apprenticeship is ultimately always to the self.

To desire to be what one can be is purpose in life. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces. Who squanders talent praises death.

In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it.

One must avoid ambition in order to write. Otherwise something else is the goal: some kind of power beyond the power of language. And the power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.

All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever.