And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.

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.

The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.

They wore their strange beauty like war paint.

I strongly believe that a federal structure based on administrative and geographic lines with strong powers for the federated states will be the best solution for Iraq.

When I go on holiday, I go to places that have animals I'm interested in.

I'll be a president that will turn our inner cities around and will give strength to people and will give economics to people and will bring jobs back.

The satirical direction I have chosen is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite way of saying that I have high expectations for the human race.

It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.

The things that have made America great are being subverted for the things that make Americans rich.

Life wants you to serve something more than yourself. When you serve something more than yourself, you are served. It's the most ironic thing in the world.

I really and truly believe that music represents humanity’s soul.