You make what seems a simple choice: choose a man or a job or a neighborhood- and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life.

With enough libraries, all content is free.

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

I am always jumping into the sausage grinder and deciding, even before I’m half ground, that I don’t want to be a sausage after all.

Being consistent meant not departing from convictions already formulated; being a leader meant making other persons accept these convictions. It was a narrow track, and a one-way, but a person might travel a considerable distance on it. A number of dictators have.

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.