I was a biography in constant motion, memory to the marrow of my bones.

It's best to give while your hand is still warm.

What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I die so I wouldn't have to go through the business of thinking up a new book. But I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction.