Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.

Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)

The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.

Don't let your 'bad pride' prevent you from moving forward on an opportunity that will allow you to showcase your 'good pride'.

Dare to live by letting go.

Jason, I love you and you cannot escape from it. Even if you could, I would never let you go.

Don't stop aspiring. Just learn to duck. . .

My identity is linked to my grandmother, who's pure Filipino, as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify.

I'd always have it (grease( in at least two places, in case the umpires would ask me to wipe one off. I never wanted to be caught out there with anything though, it wouldn't be professional.

Business money reattaches worldwide Deep inside stops the diamond rocks In a million world, billion world, quitrillion world Rap moves on to the year three thousand

certain kinds of people become Republicans and certain kinds of people become Democrats, and ... it's more than a matter of party affiliation. It's a way of thinking and being.

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

We will never have real safety and security for wage earners unless we provide for safety and security for the wage payers and wage savers.