A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.

Things, events and people align and position themselves accordingly when a strong enough thought stirs them.

There’s a Russian proverb: To taste the ocean, all you need is one gulp.

Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub.

I want to reach the heights of stardom beyond my imagination.

I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

It is man who, through his thoughts and actions, creates turmoil and disintegration in the natural, harmonious unity of the world.

For me, the glory of my first 25 years as a writer was I could put things off as long as I wanted.

If you want to find out what the future of the Republican Party is if Hillary Clinton wins, take a look at California.