The ability to play the clarinet is the ability to overcome the imperfections of the instrument. There's no such thing as a perfect clarinet, never was and never will be.

It happens very rarely, but when it happens it's worth waiting for, that the instrument becomes part of your body.

Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.

Opportunities are everywhere.

You are ice and fire the touch of you burns my hands like snow.

You can always find somebody to beat up. This goes back to the schoolyard. Most men would think, Don't chum with girls. But I chummed with girls.

I guess I strike people as very serious, or very intense.

Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?

Every major criminal case is always built from the bottom up. You get the underlings, you get them to plead and cooperate, and that leads to the higher-ups.

Conceit is a fog that envelops a man's real character beyond his own recognition. It weakens his native ability and strengthens all his inconsistencies .

Work is the opposite of creativity.

The very success of medicine in a material way may now threaten the soul of medicine.