Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.

Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.

Perseverance n.: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.

50, 000-63, 000 individuals in the United States and 19, 000-25, 000 in the UK die prematurely from cancer annually due to insufficient vitamin D.

You just be honest about who you are, and if you dont end up with any friends, then good for you.

I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary' diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.

The only true conquests-those that awaken no regrets- are those obtained over our ignorance.

There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.

Evil is unintelligible. It is just a thing in itself, like boarding a crowded commuter train wearing only a giant boa constrictor. There is no context which would make it explicable.

Whoever is holding the belt right now is the one I want to fight. I want to get that belt again. It's mine.