All I needed to know, all true knowledge, the only really essential knowledge, was to be found in the books I read and the music I listened to

There is only one thing children find harder to hold back than tears, and that is joy.

Writing isn't black magic. You just have to come up with an idea...

It was a fantastic feeling, but it left me restless because the most important thing in it was the longing, for what was going to be, not for what I did or had done.

Go somewhere you know nothing about and see what happens.

Writing was a defeat, it was a humiliation, it was coming face-to-face with yourself and seeing you weren't good enough.

Indifference is one of the seven deadly sins, actually the greatestof them all, because it is the only one that sins against life.

Actually there were only two forms of existence, I reflected: one that was tied to a place and one that wasn't. Both had always existed. Neither could be chosen.

For life, it's very, very bad to be sensitive, but for a writer, it's very good.

Attributing to another author, "Writing a novel is like setting a goal and walking there in your sleep.

My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?

Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere.

When a regular person gets sick, they take an aspirin. When a writer gets sick, they take notes.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

You must find something that you deeply love and are passionate about and are willing to sacrifice a lot to achieve.

I haven't any close friends. Friendship needs time to interact, sit down, gossip. I don't have that time.

I trust myself, and I trust Life to support and protect me.

We each have the kind of children we deserve.

When one is past, another care we have; Thus woe succeeds a woe, as wave a wave.

We both [with Alixandra Kolesky MacKenzie] got into ceramics, you might say, by the back door. Looking back on it, I think this was a very good thing.