I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted.

People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.

I don't think America has ever had a center the way London is the center of England or Dublin is the center of Ireland.

Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.

Structure is one of the things that I always hope will reveal itself to me.