Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.

A man is called a saint not because he does no longer sin but because he recognizes his weakness and seeks for forgiveness every time he falls

Essentially, almost all humans are born with a fear of the unknown. It casts a pall of anxiety which pushes us into the arms of religions and soothsayers and their made-up answers.

We are made kind by being kind.

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

On one tour, I was collecting stories about pet monkeys. You'd be surprised how many people have stories about monkeys. The problem is, most monkey stories end tragically.

When you practice selfless giving, you're in balance and harmony with everything.

To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

...a truth you don't understand is more dangerous than a lie.

The world never puts a price on you higher than the one you put on yourself.

Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.