The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. But a novel is different. A novel is more like falling in love. You don't say, 'I'm going to fall in love next Tuesday, I'm going to begin my novel.' The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.

People who are greedy have extraordinary capacities for waste-they must, they take in too much.

So you come soon to power, but you have merely inherited the crisis and yours is the profit of cancer.

You never do find out what makes you tick, and after a while it's unimportant.

A democracy depends upon people getting brighter all the time. Democracies are delicate. They're not just ipso facto and just go on and on.

The paradox is that no love can prove so intense as the love of two narcissists for each other.