The novel form is about the protagonist's struggle to transform his arbitrary, fragmented, given experience into a narrative as meaningful as his favorite books.

There are ideas it will be easy to say in the future that we just don't have the language for now.

If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that's where we're going to find them.

Poetry is another space, like love, where we extend that extra credit to the writer.

Humor is really important to me. All my favorite writers are writers I consider to be funny, including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, even though that's not necessarily their rap.

In a lot of ways, being a writer is a lousy job - grueling, emotionally taxing, terrible hours, no health care - so if it wasn't about love, what would be the point?

At any given time, there are ideas and images that can only be communicated indirectly.

When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that something can come to you from the outside.

I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years!

I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.

People are shaped by friendship as much as by romance.

You may not need to do it all, design it all or direct it all. But when it comes to making things you want to happen to happen you may well have to inspire and drive it all.

Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles.

Mitt Romney is not going to be running for president. So you know what that means. We are getting closer and closer to 'President Trump.'

Men endowed with a wild imagination should have, in addition, the great poetic faculty of denying our universe and its values so that they may act upon it with sovereign ease.

I find a woman's point of view much grander and finer than a man's.

You don't have to agree with me, but I think the heart of who we are stays pretty much the same," Hope said, "What changes is how those core traits manifest themselves over time.

I don't even understand why I have 1.7 million Twitter followers. Every day, I want to remind them and say, "Do you realize I'm an astrophysicist? Do you know what you're doing here?"

Whatever lifts the corners of your mouth, trust that

I love living with animals. And my children love animals. I love walking around and being with the horses. But the deer? They're naughty.

If everyone is there to make a good film, everyone is down to earth, and everyone is there for the right reasons - the scale doesn't really matter I think.