Longing, the hope for fulfillment, is the one unwavering passion of the world's commerce.

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing. I did that with 'World's Fair' as with all of them. The inventions of the book come as discoveries.

The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.

Most people are quiet in the world, and live in it tentatively, as if it were not their own.

A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

I have committed many sins in my life. This precise sin-the sin against poets-is without absolution.