Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

[Tea-masters] have given emphasis to our natural love of simplicity, and shown us the beauty of humility. In fact, through their teachings tea has entered the life of the people.

You can’t even stay dead like a reasonable person!” he yelled, overjoyed at the sight of his brother. “What, you didn’t miss me?

None can do a man so much harm as he doeth himself.

I think I would much rather push the boundaries of the degradation that the characters face.

Losers let it happen; winners make it happen!

You think I'm a fool?" demanded Harry. "No, I think you're like James," said Lupin, "who would have regarded it as the height of dishonor to mistrust his friends.

If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill.

What I do to take care of my heart is exercise and try to eat healthy.

Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.

I have before me a newspaper slip on which a writer expresses the opinion that no one should be allowed to possess more than one million dollars' worth of property.