Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame.

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.

If you are still tied to your past, the devil will keep using it as a weapon against you

For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it.

What if you threw a protest and no one showed up? The lack of angst and anger and emotion is a big positive.

I ran for the electoral college. I didn't run for the popular vote.

The media's trying to attack my administration because they know we are following through on pledges that we made and they're not happy about it for whatever reason.

You can't get anywhere flying under the radar.

Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurshi p comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.

O Lord that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!

Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.