People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible.

The artist is still a little like the old court jester. He's supposed to speak his vicious paradoxes with some sense in them, but he isn't part of whatever the fabric is that makes a nation.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

I don't want money badly enough to work for it.

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.