One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.

The king was pregnant.

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.

There's a great fear of the imagination. It's a dangerous thing. It's out of control, it's subversive.