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.

everything is toxic. That's the point. You can't avoid toxins. Thinking you can is just another symptom of the toxic overload stage.

Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.

Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.

Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.

I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too.

Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family