I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.

There are ideas it will be easy to say in the future that we just don't have the language for now.

If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that's where we're going to find them.

The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books.

Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer.

Humor is really important to me. All my favorite writers are writers I consider to be funny, including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, even though that's not necessarily their rap.

In a lot of ways, being a writer is a lousy job - grueling, emotionally taxing, terrible hours, no health care - so if it wasn't about love, what would be the point?

At any given time, there are ideas and images that can only be communicated indirectly.

When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that something can come to you from the outside.

I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years!

People are shaped by friendship as much as by romance.

You must remember that you are my prime treasure (and always have been).'Emma Darwin to husband Charles

To confront death every day, to see it for yourself, you have to love the living

I'm about to start reading it again, because what good is a story you only want to read once?

Apart from painting and gardening, I'm not good at anything.

He showed me how to get lost, and then I showed myself how to get found.

I think it's great that they are getting funding, but it's just too easy. They don't have to work for it. We did it because we had pride, because we loved it.

I grew up on Lake Michigan during the PCB explosion, and I remember seeing the sick, dead fish with tumors, the weird deformed seagulls, the scum and the filth floating. We couldn't go swimming.

Next time a sunrise steals your breath or a meadow of flowers leave you speechless, remain that way. Say nothing, and listen as Heaven whispers, "Do you like it? I did it just for you."

I've got to read the 'Hunger Games' before I see the movie.

Knowing now what goes into making a successful artist, it's disheartening.