Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

Down the road of hate, at every busted corner lurks the need for love.

Fail often and fail cheap.

She’d forgotten to love, but she also forgot to hate. (about Clara’s mother, who had dementia)

I believe that instinct is what makes a genius a genius.

Some people are genetically programmed to be difficult.

I feel like giving back is in my blood.

There's always been a hip-hop element to my trousers.

As long as I'm facing the right direction, it doesn't matter the size of my steps.

Prayer is the best weapon we possess. It is the key that opens the heart of God.

You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say.