My writing process is ritualized and monotonous, but there's no other way to get the job done. All other fiction writers I've met say the same thing.

In the same way you can never go backward to a slower computer, you can never go backward to a lessened state of connectedness.

A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out.

I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints... I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does.

I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.

Flying dreams mean that you're doing the right thing with your life.

You really have to wonder why we even bother to get up in the morning. I mean, really: Why work? Simply to buy more stuff? That's just not enough. Look at us all. What's the common assumption that got us all from there to here? What makes us deserve the ice cream and running shoes and wool Italian suits we have? I mean, I see all of us trying so hard to acquire so much stuff, but I can't help but feeling that we didn't merit it.