The secret of keeping young is to read children's books. You read the books they write for little children and you'll keep young. You read novels, philosophy, stuff like that and it makes you feel old.

I believe that writing is an account of the powers of extrication.

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can accomplish this only by the most vigilant exercise of choice, but in a world that changes more swiftly that we can perceive there is always the danger that our powers of selection will be mistaken and that the vision we serve will come to nothing.

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.

Sometimes the easiest-seeming stories to a reader are the hardest kind to write.

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

The secret of keeping young is to read children's books. You read the books they write for little children and you'll keep young. You read novels, philosophy, stuff like that and it makes you feel old.