“An attentive reader will always learn more, and more quickly, from good authors than from life.”

“The endorsements on books aren’t entirely impartial. Unbeknownst to the average reader, blurbs are more often than not from the writer’s best friends, colleagues or teachers, or from authors who share the same editor, publisher or agent. They represent a tangled mass of friendships, rivalries, favors traded and debts repaid, not always in good faith.”

“Good ideas come from everywhere. It's more important to recognize a good idea than to author it.”

“It is quite possible--overwhelmingly probable, one might guess--that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology”

“A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin.”

“At this stage of my life, I've finally come to realize I've learned more from my children than they ever learned from me.”