And it's always possible that you will not get a nice review. So - and that's enraging of course, to get a bad review, you can't talk back, and it's sort of shaming in a way.

To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.

People do not love those whose eyes show that they are somewhere else

The declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.

I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.

I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from.

Swimming always cleans your soul

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on.

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before.

The way a book is read- which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book- can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.

My father used to say that it's never too late to do anything you wanted to do. And he said, 'You never know what you can accomplish until you try.'

I don't know why you would trade a stud pitcher.

I think that in the colonial imaginary of the average Mexican, in how it drives us, the economic dependence on the US, and in some cases cultural dependence, is quite palpable, very strong.

No, my degree was history, not the practice of art! I can't draw to save my life you know.

You never watch movies the same as you do when you're a kid, ever again.

Latins are tenderly enthusiastic. In Brazil they throw flowers at you. In Argentina they throw themselves.

The road to glory cannot be followed with much baggage.

I don't believe in luck; it's just dedication to the technique plus good physical condition.

The language of silence is the language of God, the language of silence is the language of the heart.