It's a sin for a writer to go looking for camels to put into his or her pages. I only want details that are the story.

We live in a material world, not a dramatic one.

A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.

We remember nothing. Maybe for a year or two. Maybe most of a life, if we live. Maybe. But then we will die, and who will ever understand any of this? And maybe we remember nothing most of all when we put our hands on our hearts and carry on about not forgetting.

A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

Writing about sex at length is a bit like describing mastication at length. It's the causes and the consequences and the meaning of it that are interesting, not the anatomical descriptions.

A writer has to stand outside the page. It's not for the writer to shed tears onto the pages for these characters. It's not for him to suffer or to laugh or to experience ecstasy or agony in the manner of the characters on the pages.