I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices . . . The point is not to be debilitated by your pleasures. Maybe I have lucky genes or something but I've never been truly addicted to anything, except pleasure in general.

I think, when I'm writing, I have a more clinical view than I do when I'm reading. I like pretending to be God and basically determining the fate of my characters. But as a reader, I'm a sucker. I'm very sentimental. I get upset when people that I like die. And yet I have killed off characters in my books quite heartlessly, and sometimes found that readers were very upset by it.

I was fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of my vices . . . The point is not to be debilitated by your pleasures. Maybe I have lucky genes or something but I've never been truly addicted to anything, except pleasure in general.

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

I don't think I've left a trail of weeping women in my wake. I mean, the number of serious relationships I've had has not been into double digits.

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.

If being a spokesman for a generation is a fleeting occupation, being a symbol of an era is downright dangerous for anyone who has the bad luck to outlive it.