How circumstantial reality is! Facts are like individual letters, with their spikes and loops and thorns, that make up words: eventually they hurt our eyes, and we long to take a bath, to rake the lawn, to look at the sea.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.

Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback.

Musicians are very mysterious and wonderful people to me; I don't know how they do it.

I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish.

All men are mortal, and therefore all men are losers; our profoundest loyalty goes out to the failed.

How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.