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.

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.

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.

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

Unless you want a horrible surprise, never go bird watching with an open mouth.

Monopolies are bad and deserve their reputation when things are static and the monopolies function as toll collectors... But I think they're quite positive when they're dynamic and do something new.

Beauty is a fragile gift.

Force is the weapon of the weak.

The more original a short-story writer, the odder looking the assortment of things he or she puts together for a story.

To be the best you have to work overtime.

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

One of the great consolations . . . is that because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so.

I have too much energy, even for myself. I'm lucky to have something that focuses me.

Truth has to persist unaffected, in the past, present and future. That which is absent in two states, how can it be true.