Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

I grew up in the Bronx. I'm into rap music.

They tell us that "Pity is akin to Love;" if so, Pity must be a poor relation.

The Spirit is a voice that one feels more than hears.

Like fingerprints, all marriages are different.

You need younger men in Africa, men and women in African politics.

I went to a military school between the ages of six and 12 and later into the air force. You learn discipline and strength of character.

We shouldn't consider smaller countries insignificant. I abide by this principle.

Music is a spiritual doorway. ... Its power comes from the fact that It plugs directly into the soul.

A young person wanting to become an artist might simply go purposefully and dedicatedly to his or her room with a few books and a thousand blank canvases for four years.

Love's more than holding hands and going to dances. It's two people who struggle to live, even when they should maybe both be dead. When one of them would be better off dead.