I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.

Heroics are not easily had for the young in our times. Perhaps that is why they go to such extremes to create their own dangers.

You're supposed to get tired planting bulbs. But it's an agreeable tiredness.

What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn, you can't congeal: There is a forward motion to yearning.

How easy it was to make people happy, when you didn't want or need anything from them.