Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn't. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.

It's easy when you grow up in fear to act out of fear. I don't want to embrace that fear; I prefer to be kind.

For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.

When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: Why did success pass me by?

Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?

Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.

Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.

It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.

I can't have composite characters. I can't attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.

It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.

My parents are deeply pious Hindus.

Ние строим духовно пречиствателна станция.

The greatest victory a person can have is the victory over himself.

Virtually every tribe in the march towards civilization developed its tailored made initiation practices. In America, sports are part of the test for a young man’s initiation into manhood.

Juno MacGuff: I don't know what kind of girl I am.

We were young, we were pilots, and we were hungry to test the new technology of 'space machines.' And we all wanted to be first.

Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience.

Look at politics; they're always in competition over an election, who wants to win. It's just who we are, it's what we do.

Do what's right for you, so long as it don't hurt no one.

My heroes don't have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don't know how, so they talk to themselves.

I like them old and rich.