Every writer aspires to recognition , and it comes entirely privately, without public fanfare, each time a piece of work is judged worthy of publication.

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.

After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies.

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination

In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.

The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

Traveling is seeing; it is the implicit that we travel by.

A weapon is only an extension of one’s own persona

I find it very easy playing Bond. I think he's hilarious. He gets himself into some extraordinarily funny situations.

We won't back down! We won't be trumped!

Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it - it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy... When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.

Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the sake of technique.

It was an idealistic vision that generation had.

Give me a treat, or leave me alone. It's Monday.

At the end of our lives we hope we will look back and, like an incense stick completely burned away, will have poured forth all our fragrance into the world.

Trump wants a team of fighters. He wants a team of people that understand what they're up against and who's out to get them, to stop them, to destroy them, to impede them or what have you.

I sensed only an instant of apprehension. She never raised an eyebrow at the question.. Such a brave girl.