Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.

The past is the prism through which we see a great, great, great deal of ourselves; it's a useful prism. It doesn't mean that we're fascinated by the dead or that we're fascinated by things that are settled. It is just one place where we can go to understand ourselves in the present.

Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books.

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by 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.

When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes.

Your life doesn't mean what you have or what you get. Its what your'e willing to give up.