I worry that's what people are going to think about me if they kind of go backwards. But if that didn't happen to you, I'll feel better.

More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.

Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.

You never want to have to give your child bad news of any kind.

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.

Kenneth Branagh. There was a time in my life when people would tell me constantly that I look like him. I could do a lot worse than that.

New York is ultimately not the synthesis but merely the sum of its unfathomable subjectivities, its personal histories, its uncategorisable figures.

You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

I once saw John Updike get in front of a crowd and read a story that he'd written in 1958, and I just thought, I can't even look at stuff I wrote a year ago, I can't believe he's doing this.

That's a long way of saying no, I'm always too bound up in thinking about the characters in whatever I'm working on and trying to make good to dwell on characters from previous books.

Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.

This is why I stayed away, " he growled against my mouth as his hands started to rove over me with knowing, ruthless passion. "Can't be near you without wanting you. Can't stop myself anymore--

Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

Don’t jail your imagination. You cannot imagine beyond your desires. You can't unleash your imagination without the SEEDs of desire.

But would I have chosen to be Paul? I'd miss Will too much, the feel of his shins.

A hero is someone who over and over does the right thing even though no one is there to witness it.

Certain kinds of people just can't live life taking risks with adventure.

Play with a foole at home, and he will play with you in the market.

Mine doesn't even know there is laundry. It just magically gets done.

Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.