One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.

Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.

Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day… and rightly so.

It’s not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons.

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can’t say it enough.

I’ll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I’m ready to begin.

All change is not growth; all movement is not forward.

I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a...

The Christian market has less competition and lower standards.

I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you’re going to be in this business, if you’re going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.

I notice when I’m on these trips, I read like mad. It’s the only thing that seems to center me, bring me back to remembering who I am. Or forgetting who I am!

Sometimes you are being interviewed by someone and you think, if I knew this person they’d be my best friend. Other times you’re being interviewed by a complete jerk.

Life is extremely complicated.

Avoid problems, and you’ll never be the one who overcame them.

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

He was the only person caught in the collapse, and afterward, most of his work was recovered too, and it is still spoken of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played.

Whenever somebody comes up with a good idea, there’s somebody else who has never had a good idea in his life who stands up and says, Oh, you can’t do that.

I claim Dickens as a mentor. He’s my teacher. He’s one of my driving forces.

Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul – chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we’re the greatest...

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

The engineering is secondary to the vision.

Poetry is man’s rebellion against being what he is.

As for dialogue, I think it keeps things moving to cut to the chase.

I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting...

In love there are two things — bodies and words.

You can browse to your heart’s content but it’s hard work and not easy on the feet unless you do it through catalogs or the Internet, and I like to touch and try on the...

Language is an archaeological vehicle… the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.

Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

I don’t want to write formula. I don’t want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part.

Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no...

Money costs too much.

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.

My own funeral, I’d like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers...

I didn’t really choose to write; I more or less fell into it.

The race of children possesses magically sagacious powers.

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.

So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.

I was raised in a Christian home and, in fact, my mother led me to Christ as a youngster.

I suppose I’m proudest of my novels for what’s imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.

Nothing is accidental in the universe — this is one of my Laws of Physics — except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

You define a good flight by negatives: you didn’t get hijacked, you didn’t crash, you didn’t throw up, you weren’t late, you weren’t nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.

Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.

The character of Rosie is based on a woman who used to live in the same apartment building I lived in many years ago. She’s taken on a life of her own, of course.

Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.

We’re frightened of what makes us different.

Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don’t come together in real groups.

I’m too shy for personal appearances, and I’ve found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can’t do any writing for many weeks afterward.