The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.

A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.

Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.

Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.

...One reason I became a writer was that I figured out that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want and people think that you are working.

I have been mocked by beauty, too. But it was the beauty which cost me nothing that in the end turned upon me.

Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.