Nobody had ever told me that anything could be like this.

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

There is no country but the heart.

In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don't mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find out what you really think or who you are.

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

You don’t choose a story, it chooses you.