The moment you lose curiosity in the world, you might as well be dead.

He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience for the story to begin.

How easily this unthinking family love was forgotten.

I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage. And, in fact, I think the profession rose quite honorably to the task. Novelists require a slower turnover, I mean, in time.

And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.

In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled.

Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.