As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

By bringing the future into the present, you can do something about it usually before it gets too late.

Choose the body to live in.

As long as anger, paranoia and misinformation drive our political debate, there are unhinged souls among us who will feel justified in turning to violent remedies for imagined threats.

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.

I'm not in love with you.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.

Classic author moment, "Oh dear, did I kill that character or not?

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

I like to make definite choices and give my characters as many unique edges as possible.

Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.