In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

If the culture shifts, if people think differently about women, the art will shift, too. You can't ask art to make social change. It's not what it's for.

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.

One either loves, or waits for love, or banishes love for good. That is the full range of possible choices.

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

I think that England made a very big, historical mistake to allow itself to become the kind of terrorist capital of the world.

To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him... If dissent is now also to be thought of as a form of 'dissing,' then we have indeed succumbed to the thought police.