It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island.

With all due disrespect...

If America has a future, Jazz has a future. The two are inseparable.

I would say readers can trust my work more than anyone else's.

You raze the old to raise the new.

I pass through the difficult moments in life, really difficult times on grass, during my seven years of my career. All of a sudden I felt comfortable.

Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

Music chooses her musicians.

The stultifying effect of the movies is not that the children see them but that their parents do, as if Hollywood provided a plausible adult recreation to grow up into.

We teach more by what we are than by what we teach.