Good advice is rarer than rubies.

A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?

A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.

Freedom to reject is the only freedom.

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.

A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.

A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

You can't judge an internal injury by the size of the hole.

There are things you break that can't be put back together again. And Kashmir may be one of them.

A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second.

I grew up kissing books and bread.

If you're offended, it's your problem.

My horizon's have shrunk and I have only endings to write.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

I didn't become a writer to write about me.