Movies took you right up to the edge but kept you safe.

In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.

Our tears fatten upon our memories of joy.

My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me-to give the mundane its beautiful due.

You imagine a reader and try to keep the reader interested. That's storytelling. You also hope to reward the reader with a sense of a completed design, that somebody is in charge, and that while life is pointless, the book isn't pointless. The author knows where he is going. That's form.

It's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain.

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.