Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.

Michael had once read to her how God had cast a man and woman out of paradise. Yet, for all their human faults and failures. God had shown them the way back in.

Leaders pull the trigger, but the "shot" belongs to you.

The Lisbon hub is important to Portugal, the country. That's not going to go away. It needs to be there. The country depends on tourism.

Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.

you told me I could beat him. You promised.

It was always baseball for me. This is what I always wanted to do.

Freedom. Sometimes it isn't what you thought it was when you wanted it to start with. When you can do anything you want, choosing's not easy.

There are many ways that we hurt ourselves when we don't like who we are.

Take your love and put it where the sun don't shine.

It is a natural law that like causes always produce like effects; and, therefore, any man or woman who learns to do things in this certain way will infallibly get rich.