It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.

I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.

Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.

We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.

...every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.

Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.