I...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end.

Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining.

I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.

My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

The central problem of novel-writing is causality.