Indeed, loft aspirations produce ideas.

Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self.

Writing eases my suffering . . . writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.

If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.

Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

Love is so holy, so confusing. It makes a man anxious, tormented. Love, how can I define it?

I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.

For me, writing [was] a question of survival...I could not trust anyone, even my family. The atmosphere was so poisoned. People even in your own family could turn you in.

The happiness of mankind, if it ever should come to pass, would still leave men asking: Why? What point to it? To what end?

The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth

In the deregulated realm of US banking and finance, crime does occasionally pay for its foul deeds, not in prison time but by making modest rebates to the victims.

I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us.

You really can't say things that upset someone in print and expect them to be nice and leave you their money. That's just not reasonable.

A half-hearted spirit has no power. Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Average people enter into their endeavors headlong and without care.

I have this fantasy. I'm walking past a bookshop and I click my fingers and all my books go blank. So I can start again and get it right.

When people do not dread authorities, then a greater dread descends.

When I began making films, they were just movies: 'What's the new movie? What are you doing?' Now they're called 'adult dramas.'

The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.