I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.

Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)

The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.

Most of us must learn to love people and use things rather than loving things and using people.

(on forgiveness) Didn't he and I stand together before an all seeing God convicted of the same murder? For I had murdered him with my heart and my tongue.

Military troops were withdrawn from Chechnya on Dec. 31, 1996.

Whatever you want is as elusive as you make it.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows

There is no one else - there's never been anyone else but you. You're it Maddie.

Sound doctrine does not enter into the hard and disobedient heart; but, as if beaten back, enters anew into itself.

To be defeated, but not to give in, is victory.

Play with passion and heart. If you don't carry passion into sport - or into any job for that matter - you won't succeed.

There is no worse sickness for the soul, o you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.