The writer's life [is] full of frailty and defeat like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can quite easily be buried, or half-buried, by the life.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.

An event of failure has absolutely nothing to do with the possibility of one's future success.

Amazing things start happening when we start praying!

I've always been successful. Now I'm famous and successful.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

Give me someone I can look up to, show me someone I can love.

I am the farthest thing from a computer genius.

I was very confused. I didn't understand the difference between rebellion against God and rebellion against the system that's not God.

The moral code which was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for our children.

You can be stupid once, but idiotic to do it again. I'll settle for being stupid.