I think the close work I do as a translator pays off in my writing - I'm always searching for multiple ways to say things.

Do what you want to do, and don't worry if it's a little odd or doesn't fit the market.

Why don't you like the foods I like?" he asks sometimes. "Why don't you like the foods I make?" I answer.

If you think of something, do it. Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that.

Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become ‘better organized.

There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.

My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.

Art is not in some far-off place.

Work hard and meticulously. When in trouble, look closely at a text that is a good example of what you're trying to do. And be patient.

I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there.

I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. While publishers still do love the novel and people do still like to sink into one, the very quick form is appealing because of the pace of life.

Shamelessness is not the same as honesty.

A celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity.

Every nation has to follow a certain policy: Commercial, trade, various other types of policies.

Exquisite beauty resides rather in the female form than face, where it is also more lasting.

I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found.

Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows.

Great books are written from a sense that there is nothing to lose.

When you shift the gear and that little needle on the tach goes into the red and reads 9,000 rpm, that's bad.

No matter what name we give it or how we judge it, a candidate's character is central to political reporting because it is central to a citizen's decision in voting.

Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy; who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.