A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.

My greatest inspiration is memory.

You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.

No one has ever described the place where I have just arrived: this is the emotion that makes me want to travel. It is one of the greatest reasons to go anywhere.

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.

One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.