So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother and someone’s older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them.

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.

I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.

He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.

I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.

I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.