A tight structural form opens possibilities. Take a pattern, an established model or sub-genre, and write to it. In writing, limitation gives freedom

It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.

We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.

By all means be experimental, but let the reader be part of the experiment

I wonder now whether inner coldness and desolation may not be the pre-condition for making the world believe, by a kind of fraudulent showmanship, that one's own wretched heart is still aglow.

We learn from history as much as a rabbit learns from an experiment that's performed upon it.

We all have appointments with the past.

I believe that the black-and-white photograph, or rather the gray zones in the black-and-white photograph, stand for this territory that is located between life and death.

At the time I could no more believe my eyes than now I can trust my memory.

Tiny details imperceptible to us decide everything!

The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives.

Love is pure, perfect, precise, and precious.

What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?

Potter, you can skin Malfoy's shrivelfig...

My goodness, why is this woman [ Hillary Clinton ] at 46%? She's like the magic 46. She's 46% in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, she's 46% in a lot of these swing states.

I made nepotism an art form, so I get to work with a lot of relatives and they're part of it.

If I hear a song that I love - how is the groove and how is the beat and what is the feeling of this? - I can make it my own.

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

Philly gave me my ambition and drive to get more. It's a reminder to stay on top of my game. That's not a place I want to go back to.

Children are sent to school to be civilized, to learn to be part of the social enterprise.

People want change. How is Barack going to do it? I think McCain can bring change.