Men throw huge shadows on the lawn, don't they? Then, all their lives, they try to run to fit the shadows. But the shadows are always longer.

I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry. Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it's just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.

The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us - it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

I’m the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It’s just the opposite of love.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

I started writing every day. I never stopped.