Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.

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.

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

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!

I gotta say, I was really feeling the robe, but there's something about a girl in cartoon pajamas that does it for me.

The backside of mountain is a fight against human nature, " he said. "You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

Listen Columbo you're mad because your money come slow And what you make in a year I make in one show

Painting doesn't mean just describing; it's a state of spirit.

[I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.

I went to the 30th reunion of my preschool. I didn't want to go, because I've put on like a hundred pounds.