If Im going to invest the time in a novel, I want something more than the entertainment you get out of most genre fiction.

Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement.

Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie.

Snow makes cities innocent again, reveals the frailty of the human gesture against the void.

That's what happens when you keep a secret from someone you love: you start to hate them for allowing you to prove your own willingness to deceive them.

Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.

When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma'.

There is no God and that's His only commandment.

With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.

You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.

Nobody has ever been beyond his own Illusion of Life.

People say 'Bill, are you an optimist?' And I say, 'I hope so.'

There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.

I write about relationships and I try to create real-life characters.

I decided that instead of apologizing for having a lot to say, I wanted to create a format where people would come to hear me sing and speak.

Al journalism should be investigative, from football to cookery

The scissors cut the long-grown hair; The razor scrapes the remnant fuzz. Small-jawed, weak-chinned, big-eyed, I stare At the forgotten boy I was.

We all trust each other to some extent. We have to rely on experts to some extent, but we should learn to be sceptical.

If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word.