When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

Those that know where they are going will not take any path they see in front of them, but they will take the one that goes in the direction they want.

I was born with a fierce need for independence.

The worst thing someone gets is isolated. Isolation is the darkest part of any condition.

If you see a tennis player who looks as if he is working hard, that means he isn't very good.

Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it meant to live.We don't know how to live,therefore we don't know how to die

When I get the ball, for some reason I see holes. I'm not really sure how.

You see, after all, few rich men own their property. The property owns them.

Above and beyond having the social life, to have a core group of people that you work with and spend time with and learn how to work with is a nice thing.

As a holistic being you shatter the illusion of your separateness and reveal your connection to everything. This empowers you in a way that the ego-driven self could never contemplate.