“A body of work, therefore, reveals the intellectual and emotional progress of the writer, and is a map of his soul. It's both terrifying and liberating to consider this aspect of being a novelist.”

“Not all popular novelists are good, but all good novelists are, sooner or later, popular.”

“Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.”

“We yearn for tomorrow and the progress it represents. But yesterday was once tomorrow, and where was the progress in it?”

“There's no use wasting are energy being afraid of the devils, demons and things that go bump in the night... Because ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it.”

“As we passed his table, I saw that the device that imprisoned the book was clever but wicked-looking, as though the critic were holding the work - and it's author - in bondage.”

“Fear is an unavoidable element of the mortal condition. Creation in all its ravishing beauty, with its infinite baroque embellishments and subtle charms, with all the wonders that it offers from both the Maker and the made, with all its velvet mystery and with all the joy we receive from those we love here, so enchants us lack we lack the imagination, less than the faith, to envision an even more dazzling world beyond, and therefore even if we believe, we cling tenaciously to this existence, to sweet familiarity, fearful that all conceivable paradises will prove wanting by comparison.”