What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything.

Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.

I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.

Why do you always have to be right. Why do you always have to have the last word. For once in your life just let it go.

I lead a very conventional life.

We imagine things — that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. ... We have no choice, so we do it.