The oldest principle of composition: repeat everything.

What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states.

When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder.

Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

I'd like, each time out as a writer, to reinvent who I am and what I'm doing. That's one of the great pleasures and rewards of the occupation.

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.

The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.

The only alternative to making mistakes is for someone to make all your decisions for you, in which case you will make their mistakes instead of your own.

It is more easy to get a favor from fortune than to keep it.

I grew up in the heart of the Depression.

It's easy to love humanity when you're this far away from it.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face NOTHING new under the sun.

We wanted a name that people would remember and get pissed off about. Nothing too deep, believe me.

I am very busy and don't have a lot of down time, but I write my best songs in those situations. I enjoy my life the most when I have a bunch of things going on at the same time.

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No," though all the world say "Yes.

I really love what [Donald] Trump is doing. He is doing a great job of exposing the republicans for what they really are.