That's not such a bad thing,' he said to me. 'In nightmares we can think the worst. That's what they're for, I guess.

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.

I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they "don't have time to read." This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.

The rope by which the great blocks of taxes are attached to any citizenry is simple loyalty.

I wasn't a social drinker. I used to say that I didn't want to go to bars because they were full of assholes like me.

Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.

Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.