Making a book is such a big enterprise.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.

Religion makes people kill each other. Science supplies them with weapons.

Our essential differences from the norm are both huge and deeply offensive to those among us who wish to be quietly integrated into society without particular reference to our nature.

It was epic. It was awkward. It was epically awkward.

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.

With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.

The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.

If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end.

If I'm going to take my clothes off I figured I might as well do it for something that I'm directing myself since I had complete control of the edit.