Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

I get a warm feeling among my books.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

Parents. . . are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfil the promise of their early years.

He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Selflove seems so often unrequited.

Books do furnish a room.

I’m not the white-picket-fence kind of guy. So don’t go building castles in the air. You’ll get trapped in the rubble when they collapse.

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.

Today, among little girls especially, princesses and the romanticised ideal they represent - finding the man of your dreams - have a limited shelf life.

If experience was so important, we'd never have had anyone walk on the moon.

At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.

There's a quote that says, 'If you know yourself and you know your opponent, you shouldn't fear the results of 100 battles.' Just really being prepared gives you a lot of confidence.

I have to be very aware of the increasing downside risks that threaten the overall global situation.

As long as it's not me, I'll be cool.

Self-nurturance, or learning to bask in bliss, is an acquired art form.