At the exact moment any decision seems to be being made, it's usually long after the real decision was actually made--like light we see emitted from stars.

Marrying the right girl is even more imperative today than it was when I was 23 years old because it's so much harder to get on as an imaginative writer like me now. You need to have somebody who believes in what you're doing and who never is skeptical about what you're doing. My wife thought it was a great thing for me to be a writer because in practical terms it freed her to do what she wanted to do, which was work.

Very early you come to the realization that nothing will ever take you away from yourself.

I don't want to be taken to Bhutan and smell the flowers. I want to be told something I couldn't have been told any other way.

Maturity, as I conceived it, was recognizing what was bad or peculiar in life, admitting it has to stay that way, and going ahead with the best of things.

My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to.

It is right that you have to have a tolerance for solitude. But when that solitude bears fruit, you can abandon it. You can be in the company of others.