Irony - The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity.

Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.

If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.