Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

You throw a person in the river and then make a spectacle of jumping in to save them.

Everyone knows everything eventually.

He used to say we all had a compass inside of us and what we needed to do was to find it and to follow it.

Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.

It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.

You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?

I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing.

If you're trying to find out what's coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen.

I am not mature enough as a reader to enjoy a book in which I hate all the people.

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

I will write my way into another life.

The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.

It's always better to have too much to read than not enough.

One must not be shy where language is concerned.

The love between humans is the thing that nails us to the earth.