I used to work for 12 or 14 hours at a time but the digital age has made such happy immersions almost impossible.

What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states.

When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder.

Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

I'd like, each time out as a writer, to reinvent who I am and what I'm doing. That's one of the great pleasures and rewards of the occupation.

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.

The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.

What hurts the most?Rejection..

You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

Courageous leadership is not fearless leadership. What makes you a leader is how you deal with your fears.

I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.

I really respect anybody who stands by their truth.