Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

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!

..he wanted her.And at another time, as another man, he would have her. Without hesitation. As lover. . . as more.

Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.

I kiss the soil as if it is the last time I will recognize the beauty she has given the trees.

Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

Freud is all nonsense

Blessed is he whose own faults keep him from seeing the faults of others.

True happiness comes from the realization that God has already made available everything we will ever need.

Work as joy, inaccessible to the psychologists.

I think it helps the writers to sell their books, if they announce my attachment, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to make the movies in the next year, or two, or three.

Tea-shops were to become my favourite haunts in England.