I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It's the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

Once you finish a book, it doesn't belong to you anymore. You're giving it to other people. If something in what a writer writes can excite the imagination and the feelings of the reader, then that reader carries it around forever. Nothing is more vivid than good fiction.

The ideal reader's the same, and I suppose this person has never had a face or a gender or an age. It's just some kind of unknown other who will be sympathetic and read each word carefully and understand what I'm writing about. I suppose every writer feels this.

All children are love children, he said, but only the best ones are ever called that.

Artists are the people for whom the world is not enough.

I think the act of talking about something - with a friend, or someone in your family, or someone you care about, and you're discussing something that you both admire - can often sharpen your thoughts about what you've read or seen and help you think more clearly about it.

You find the book in the process of doing it. That's the adventure of the job.