If you have children you worry about the world you're leaving them.

There is no magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one's parents.

Once you get that instinct for the fictiveness, the fictionality of fiction, it kind of sets you free.

We all dream things into being; you imagine yourself having a child, and then you have a child. An inventor will think of something in his mind and then make it actual. So things are often passing from the imagined realm into the real world.

If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.

Make as much racket as you like people. Noise is life and an excess of noise is a sign that life is good. There will be time for us all to be quiet when we are safely dead.

Shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture.