One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

I get a warm feeling among my books.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

Parents. . . are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfil the promise of their early years.

He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Selflove seems so often unrequited.

Books do furnish a room.

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

A variety of nothing is superior to a monotony of something.

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation.

Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves.

In Puritan thinking, the Christian life was a heroic venture, requiring a full quota of energy.

Discipline and freedom are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent because otherwise, you'd sink into chaos.

The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning.

PHP is rarely the bottleneck.

I'm more focused and have a greater sense of challenge, because I constantly feel the weight of time.

We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.