Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.

People do not love those whose eyes show that they are somewhere else

The declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.

I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.

I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from.

Swimming always cleans your soul

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on.

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before.

I'm always the one with the activist friends. I've been an activist very little.

Love is the only emotion so unexplainable and unique, that not even the greatest of writers could hope to contain it within their meagre words.

She was not a vegetarian and knew firsthand animals had to die for her delectation, but she never liked to think about it.

Hope! of all ills that men endure The only cheap and universal cure.

You don't want to become one of those Hollywood idiots who is just blathering about anything

Repentance is the word that gives us a second chance.

We have become more and more not a nation of athletes but a nation of spectators.

In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic.

Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.

Every relation to mankind, of hate or scorn or neglect, is full of vexation and torment.

I actually like pole dancing! It gives you so much confidence. I never thought I'd do it, but now I'm really into it.