Having watched herself in the speckled mirror ... she was already shocked beyond surprise at what the flat hand of age could do.

Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.

the first time you are reconciled to the terrible unfairness of disappointment, you are getting old.

Recorded history is wrong. It’s wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.

When I'm working on a serious and solid book ... I read about a detective novel a day. It's the best legal dope in the world. It makes you feel good until the next morning you can work again.

[The inspiration that comes to authors of fiction] is not an act of intelligence.

Kindness alchemizes the soul, and a sweeter, richer life is the delicious result.

To make one, there must be two.

The only sin is mediocrity.

In order to pile weakness upon weakness he was trying to drag others along the path that he himself had walked.

Mathematics effectively began when a few Greek friends got together to talk about numbers and lines and angles.

I refuse to engage in an intellectual battle with an unarmed man.

I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die.

Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike.

Just as we bemoan the passing away of the Great Novel, a great novelist is likely to emerge, perhaps even from Denmark or Switzerland, to prove us wrong.