Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

She looked at his face and saw a monk and a detective, both beautiful and bizarre.

Security can only be achieved through constant change through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.

The day you think there is no improvements to be made is a sad one for any player.

When I was a little boy, I always wanted to run. I loved competing with my friends.

The qualities that one needs to be a good goalkeeper are exactly the same as to be a good sculptor. In both professions one should have a good relationship with time and space.

I wanted to be able to write in the voice that I talk to my friends and assume that everybody would know what I was talking about.

A recursive definition does not necessarily lead to a recursive process.

Now I feel I have an unspoken deal with the paparazzi: 'I won't do anything publicly interesting if you agree not to follow me.'

I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.

Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.