After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

He wasn't good with this sort of thing - with the back-and-forth dance between man and woman. He wasn't even sure if they were dancing, or if she was merely being polite.

Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.

I wish you did return my regard, " he said. "More than I have ever wished anything in my life! Perhaps you may yet learn to do so: I should warn you that I don't easily despair!

There was a magical breakthrough when the computer became cheap and we could see that everyone could afford a computer.

Meditation, in the beginning, is just replacement thinking. Instead of having the usual negative things that wander around in your mind, you are replacing those with very bright images.

Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul.

"Foreboding" and "ominous" is what you're striving to achieve-not mention.

The president elect [Donald Trump] says that will lead to more investment and growth. Skeptics say the tax plan would explode deficits.

People always ask how there are female priests, but in this world there are.

A spark neglected has often raised a conflagration.