The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win.

Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

The most noble title any child can have, Demosthenes wrote, is Third.

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction.

I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.