You have to be a product of the product.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

I get a warm feeling among my books.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

Parents. . . are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfil the promise of their early years.

He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Selflove seems so often unrequited.

Books do furnish a room.

Becoming a man means doing the right thing even though it may be hard or difficult. Boys do what is easiest. A man does what is right, whether easy or not.

Do it at your best or Don't do it at all.

He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.

Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

No battle can be won in the study, and theory without practice is dead.

When conservatives talk about opportunity, they mean opportunities for the rich to get richer, for the powerful to get more powerful.

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

My mother wanted me to be a professor, because I have several people in my family who are professors at university.

The only real access that I have to my mind is when I'm writing.

Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it.