When a writer develops a story, he is confronted with a poison that is inside him. If you don't have that poison, your story will be boring and uninspired. It's like fugu: The flesh of the pufferfish is extremely tasty, but the roe, the liver, the heart can be lethally toxic.

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.

A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.

What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.

Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.

I'll never see them again. I know that. And they know that. And knowing this, we say farewell.

I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?