There is a terrible sameness to the euphoria of alcohol and the euphoria of metaphor.

You can't expect to communicate with anyone if you're a bore.

Novels are about men and women and children and dogs, not politics.

The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable.

The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.

I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.

For these are not as they might seem to be, the ruins of our civilization, but are temporary encampment and outposts of the civilization that we - you and I - shall build.