For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.

In the right hands, a comic strip attains a beauty and elegance that, really, I would put against any other art.

When you're older and wiser a lot of the ego has gone out of the window.

You can't look in the face of adoration and be cruel.

I'm always announcing my retirement. I'm still not retired.

Anyone who is not working toward the truth is missing the whole point of living.

He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.

There are rules in advertising, and those rules are self-imposed by the client companies because they don't want their products to be seen as dishonest.

Be good at something. It makes you valuable.

Ninety-eight percent of what goes on in people's heads is none of their smucking business.