So in the first draft, I'm inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what's going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things.

To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.

People do not love those whose eyes show that they are somewhere else

The declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.

I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.

I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from.

Swimming always cleans your soul

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on.

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before.

The spirit awaken, the soul revive.

If you don't dream, then you don't really sleep.

If we let go of the past, we will never learn from our mistakes.

When the things get hard, there is a success near about.

God has a most wicked sense of humor.

The people must have amusement as well as religion...every pure enjoyment is from heaven.

I used to be somebody. Now I’m somebody else.

Your Majesty, I am like you. I do no work. I do nothing, but I am indispensable.

I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.