Strip malls are history.

When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people's progress.

I'm skeptical that the novel will be "re­invented." If you start thinking about a medical textbook or something, then, yes, I think that's ripe for reinvention. You can imagine animations of a beating heart. But I think the novel will thrive in its current form. That doesn't mean that there won't be new narrative inventions as well. But I don't think they'll displace the novel.

You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you.

We were hoping to build a small profitable company; and of course, what we've done is build a large, unprofitable company.

It's perfectly healthy-encouraged, even- to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today