I don't use real people for inspiration.

Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.

I despise this weakness in myself - this endless one-sided conversation that takes the place of action.

...it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.

I definitely do feel a pull toward people and places that are far from my own life.

Just because we think of wolves (or the wilderness, or another race) as wild and fierce, doesn't mean there isn't another side to them.

I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.

If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.

I suppose the short chapters and differing narrative points of view are quite "cinematic" devices, which came very naturally to me.

Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.

Gypsies are, to say the least, underrepresented in literature and film.

A seal the size of Canada attaches to her soul light.

In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense.

It's amazing what you can do in this game with a heart and a brain

Although by 1851 tales of adventure had begun to seem antiquated, they had rendered a large service to the course of literature: they had removed the stigma, for the most part, from the word novel.

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera.

Her frocks are built in Paris, but she wears them with a strong English accent.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

I'm loyal to my thoughts, to my friends. This is what I really like the best. Loyalty. Sounds goody-goody. Maybe that's not the one you wanted.

I'm a Republican. I don't want to go to heaven and have to face my family up there and tell them I voted for a Democrat.

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices in the lost lilac and the lost sea voices and the weak spirit quickens to rebel for the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell quickens to recover.