“writing is serious business and not for any stray bastard that wants to try it.”

“I write - and read - for the sake of the story... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end itself?”

“I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it. Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but for his own joy? Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why.”

“Any man, who's afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who's in a business where he doesn't belong. To me-the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good. That's what I've always thought and- say, what are you laughing at?”

“We didn't really have to take everything so seriously, did we?”

“It is a sin to write this.”

“Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.”