Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

The evening's the best part of the day. You've done your day's work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

She always wanted to believe in things.

Love isn't about when you first meet. It's about the many, many years you spend together, when you're trying to keep that flame burning.

Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, thats 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me.

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

The thinner the excuse, the fatter the reason for it.

At every age we play the same game, just by different rules.

The saying goes, if you love something, let it go. I always though it was better to just shoot the damn thing so it'd never go anywhere.

These are the winter's people, he reminded himself. Tears froze upon your cheeks where they come from.

Self-imposed insanely impossible deadlines often help.

Anybody who is in freelance work, especially artistically, knows that it comes with all the insecurity and the ups and downs. It's a really frightening life .

The point is that when I see a sunset or a waterfall or something, for a split second it's so great, because for a little bit I'm out of my brain, and it's got nothing to do with me.

As far as which writers embody this form of gentle power - Tobias Wolff, for sure. His persona and his writing both share an easy, capacious confidence that says he has faith in his readers.

The only change I can really see is that I don't have to shop for pants in stores anymore.

Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways