Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.

Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.

You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.

Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. We believe we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.

Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.

You do not characterize by telling the reader about the character. You do it by showing the character thinking, speaking and acting in a characteristic way. You simply show it and shut up.