Difficult questions can have simple answers.

Experience belongs to the actor, but the story belongs to the teller. We write so we will never forget.

The twentieth century saw a professionalization of fiction writing, particularly in its second half and particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world - not so much mainland Europe, for example.

Our interaction with our friends, for instance, is in large part an interaction with representations in our own head of the people before us. That's why a friend can surprise or disappoint us.

No sight better expresses the politics of aid, the dynamics of the West and the developing countries, than the image of children, happy or in need.

Everything new is on the rim of our view, in the darkness, below the horizon, so that nothing new is visible but in the light of what we know.

That’s another argument for writing: making something that outlasts you.

When evil enters the world, do you think it comes with horns and cloven feet, billowing some foul stench?

Then, as now, I believe that the English use language to hide what they mean.

Our choices are made, our will flexed, in the teeth of events that overwhelm us and devour us.

It’s always nice to learn a thing or two from a novel, don’t you think?

The warrior of the night is a wondrous soul.

It's just common sense that if you only have one candidate remaining, the apparatus of government should be responsive enough to accommodate that and not spend any more taxpayer money,.

Most American homes have alternating current, which means that the electricty goes in one direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents harmful electron buildup in the wires.

too many maniacs not enough michelangelos

The universe is endless. Enlightenment is endless. You have only touched the outer periphery of the endless still center of perfect being.

Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67?

When you photograph a face . . .you photograph the soul behind it.

Shadow boxes become poetic theaters or settings wherein are metamorphosed the element of a childhood pastime.

I love things that are old and beautiful and tell a story, even if it's a sad one.

We seem to have lost. We have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose; to fight is to win. We have kept faith with the past, and handed on a tradition to the future.