The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.

Another thing he told his customers was that one of the great accounting unknowns of the modern age was how to value knowledge. It was an exciting field.

We sort of read two or three big newspapers but we don't get the flavor of the local events, the local news as much.

Some novelists are luckier than others in the eras of their formative intellectual years, but all Weltanschauungs return, which means that most novelists have at least a chance of a revival.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.