That's all I've ever dreamed of, Mr. Bones. To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn't matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.

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.

There are two kinds of typical days. There's the typical day when I'm writing a novel, and there's the typical day when I'm not.

Money's important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don't have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life.

Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you musn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it.

We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.

He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.