When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.

Existence was bigger than just life. It was everyone's life all together, and even if you lived in Buffalo, New York and had never been more than ten miles from home, you were part of the puzzle, too. It didn't matter how small your life was.

In the good mystery there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that is not significant.

Cities - I'm attracted to them, and I have a special attachment to New York...it's my place.

I think that's what turns young men and women into writers - the happiness you discover living in books.

No one can cross the boundary into another -- for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself

I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof.