Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, 'Nobody under 40,' or 'Nobody under 25.' With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is 'reader.'

The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.

If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart.

expectation isn't the same as desire

Richard liked to say he picked things up for a song, which was odd, because he never sang. He never even whistled. He was not a musical person.