The truths that seem most truthful, if you look at them from all sides, if you look at them close up, turn out to be either half truths or lies.

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.

Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)

The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.

... and it broke my heart in so many pieces I wondered if it would ever be whole again.

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars nor its great scholars great men.

I kneel to my Lord because I am such a failure. I pray, I hope, I look to the Gospels.

When you're not happy, you need to be strong to change, resisting the temptation of turning back. The weak goes nowhere

If I score against Liverpool I will not celebrate.

Cooking is like snow skiing: If you don't fall at least 10 times, then you're not skiing hard enough.

Lawyers don't run sales forces.

Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.

There is a good ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment.

People don't like to vote against something that's so incredibly popular.