Believe in your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.

If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today.

The world is full of things that upset people. But most of us deal with it and move on and don't try and burn the planet down.

Free societies are societies in motion, and with motion comes friction.

We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins.

It's so disappointing, to put it mildly, that people know so much about my life. Because it means that they're always trying to look at my books in terms of my life.