To have too much time is not good, you have to force yourself. And human beings aren't meant for true freedom. I've learned that, having had it.

Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.

Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.

Art is so personal. I'm very comforted by the fact that certain movies that I love, other people hate. Certain books that I love, other people hate. You can't please everybody.

Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

I think fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition.

I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much...people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov.

You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die.

You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.

Sometimes memories follow you wherever you go-you don't need to take them with you.

In the act of loving someone you arm them against you.

To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

I used to be very shy. When I first started, I had to go to a casting, and I had to go in a bikini. I thought I was too skinny. But I went in and got the job! And that's how I started.

I know that the most joy in my life has come to me from my violin.

The protection of evil must be the most self-destructive job.

Death comes to us all sooner or later. We cannot escape it.

I trust my wife more than I trust myself.

One of the permanent possessions of the human heart is the memory of its noble enthusiasms.

Luxury is nice, but creativity is nicer.