The literary interview won't tell you what a writer is like. Far more compellingly to some, it will tell you what a writer is like to interview.

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.

Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful.

Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.

My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.

When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable

Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody gets over anything.

Perhaps there are other bits of my life that would take on content, take on shadow, if only I read more and thought less about money.

When you’ve lost all your play, guess what love becomes. Work. Work that gets harder every hour.

Love is blind; but it makes you see the blind man; teetering on the roadside . . .

Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.

To conceal an action is deceit. Even the husband is not aware of the deceit [by wife]. Lying is also deceit.

My thoughts and love go out to the Mandela family. Rest in peace Madiba. You will be missed, but your impact on this world will live forever.

The thrill of a fish at the end of the line, that thing that sparks from the dark water to spinal cord, is a vestige of an archetypal joy that has to do with sustenance, material and spiritual.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

..the writer's obsession - the desire to know and communicate, or, rather, to know everything so as to communicate with the greatest degree of precision.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

A person whose financial requirements are modest and whose curiosity, skepticism, and indifference to reputation are outsized is a person at risk of becoming a journalist.

A schedule broken at will becomes a mere procession of vagaries.

It's easy to be quick on the draw when no one has got real bullets.

Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs.