Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.

as one grows older, one realizes how little one knows about any relationship, or even about oneself.

A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant.

I don't think many writers like their best-known piece of work, particularly when it was written a long time ago.

But success and failure are not true opposites, and they're not even in the same class. I mean, they're not even a couch and a chair.

Fear comes with middle age.

What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.