There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty-unless she is wed to something more meaningful-is always superficial

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.

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

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.

I was on the point of breaking off the conversation, for nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

Not every ROAD we come across in our daily life is one we have to take. Sometimes just standing still and being, can BE the best move we ever make.

Just because you have power, doesn't mean you should use it, especially for the wrong reasons.

Once a change of direction has begun, even though it's the wrong one, it still tends to clothe itself as thoroughly in the appurtenances of Tightness as if it had been a natural all along.

Dirt rolls from his palm, Blades of grass Tumble from his hair.

It is good to be helpful and kindly, but don't give yourself to be melted into candle grease for the benefit of the tallow trade.

We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God, which lets us love and foster peace.

Breaking the rules and challenging convention is in the DNA of every successful entrepreneur.

There's a very fine line between anxiety and excitement. If you don't let anxiety stop you, you can nudge it over the line.

Managers that always promise to 'make the numbers' will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.