We are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness, and I must maintain that wistfulness is a respectable, serious condition. How, otherwise, to account for much of one's life?

Who has the courage to set right those misperceptions that bring us love?

I certainly want to continue to write in a way that's intimate. I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.

If what you want to do is write, then it's madness not to do it.

Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day.

I was just a boy on a boat in the universe.

The greater the novel, the more it is apt to embody the special, non-replicable properties of the written medium.

One of the great pluses of being an immigrant is you get to start again in terms of your identity. You get to shed the narratives which cling to you.

New York interposed itself, once and for all, between me and all other places of origin.

It won't be long before we'll be deafened by the screeches of whistles being blown by whistle-blowers blowing the whistle on themselves.

I'm completely cricketed out. If I never have to write another word about cricket again, I'll be a happy man.

Life is not about possessions, it is about purpose, perseverance and passion.

My most beautiful and best days are ahead of me but behind me.

There are constant cycles in history. There is loss, but it is always followed by regeneration. The tales of our elders who remember such cycles are very important to us now.

Place hitting is, in a sense, glorified bunting. I only take a half swing at the ball, and the weight of the bat rather than my swing is what drives it.

People always say, "I don't mean to do this . . . ," and then they do it! If you don't mean to touch on something, then don't touch on it. That's how I feel.

If we just give God the little that we have, we can trust Him to make it go around.

Men are born for each other's sake, so either teach people or endure them

The kind of acting I love is when you watch and you discover what you think perhaps you weren't supposed to see: the chink in the armor.

I am, I said to no one there and no one heard at all, not even a chair.

What is slander? A verdict of "guilty" pronounced in the absence of the accused, with closed doors, without defence or appeal, by an interested and prejudiced judge.