It didn't occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That's how one has to write anyway--in secret.

I have always kept notebooks and I go back to them over and over. They are my compost pile of ideas.

There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.

To think about love and passion and political correctness all together, it doesn't work. Art has to go way past the political to be effective.

I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms.

There are people who are always, I think, going to remain people of the book, to use another author's title, but people of the book, who really must be around.

It was just enough to sit there without words.