I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.

As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it.

For me, personally, it is very important that the days are exactly the same, so I have routines. I do the same thing every day.

Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying.

The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.

I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.

Shame tells you when you've gone too far. Then you try if it's okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know that.

As a person, I'm polite - I want to please.

If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.

Happiness is a perception—not a possession.

If you don't feel an overwhelming sense of emotion when you listen to music, then you're listening to the wrong kind.

The Church will pray to God for the dead. The survivor has honour and glory.

To throw the Christian into the furnace is to put him into Christ's parlor; for lo! Jesus Christ is walking with him.

Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.

From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but only from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true.

Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom.

Seeing other people do great work is its own form of inspiration and far more powerful than borrowing their ideas.

People going into the cities for the opportunities and the towns are getting older, no young people.

Maybe anything that anybody ever has is for now. What happened before is gone, and what will happen later is an illusion.