I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.

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.

I've had too lengthy a career and coached too many players to make a choice.

The more we are concerned for the well being of others, the closer we will feel to each other.

You are so close, and I can’t reach you.

It's a physical challenge. It's a spiritual challenge. I'm studying almost every day a different symphony, not returning to any one for a week.

The successful publishing house is the one that can guess ahead, not the one that imitates the past.

Unlimited activity, of whatever kind, must end in bankruptcy.

I tried to do the commercial thing. But I don't want to keep shoving Twinkies down everyone's throat. People are hungry for something of more substance.

Wine is earth's answer to the sun.

Everyday life inspires me, the situations that we all find ourselves in at one time or another.

It's perfectly within [Martin Peretz] rights [to fire a journalist]. It's a private - you know, th - it's not censorship. The First Amendment doesn't come into play because it's a private magazine.