Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person's power. Be just to yourself.

I just love music - by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.

I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.

I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.

Those books of mine that are remunerative - I'm not talking about poetry here - take years to write, and I am never sure they'll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.

Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people's lives, the lives of people you don't know, and you want to know what's going to happen to them.