Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization.

I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite. There!

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely.

...if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is-- excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms.

Why would you clone people when you can go to bed with them and make a baby? C'mon, it's stupid.

The river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper.

I had decided to be a magician well before I decided to be a writer. I was the little boy who would get up on-stage and do magic wearing a fake mustache, which would fall off during the performance. I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing.