Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.

The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.

You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.

Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself

Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.