My heart and the elevator, a plummet inside a plummet.

One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.

Being blocked, being uncertain, sitting there not knowing, waiting, abiding with it: this is the work. If you don't have the tolerance for that you're in great trouble. If you want to call it a writer's block... that doesn't seem a very useful name for that kind of abiding that I think is the essence of the work.

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

You could grow up in the city where history was made and still miss it all.

There's never any percentage in being ahead of your time.

Good films demand to be looked at several times in order to be observed completely.