A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.

Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go - if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.

The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods.

We did not underestimate what we could do.

Brother killing brother, father slaying son. From the looks of this old graveyard, hell nobody really won.

The honey is sweet, but the Bee stings.

Whom do I write for? I write for the story. Each story, it seems to me, knows best how it should be told. As I once put my ear to the railroad track, I listen now for the voice of my story.

Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.

Evolution happens in nature and in individuals. I want to participate actively in its happening within me.

I never complain. I chose the road of fighting with the Ukrainian oligarchy in 1996, and have paid for this with my freedom and that of my husband, my father and my close friends.