“My life feels like someone else's, and I wish he were more interesting.”

“Writing... is like putting a message in a bottle, and casting it into the evening tide... It is a container of yourself, bled through your fingertips, and it travels the world in your place.”

“Never name a ship after your wife in one of your novels, then sink it in the next chapter...”

“The author should strive to be silent in his novel.”

“There is no effort in collecting judgements. Being wise with them requires a act of true character.”

“I am evolving from being an animal,' he said. 'But it is going very, very slowly. Sometime I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it feels like anything. Yet tears don't come. Laughter doesn't come.”

“But like the best empire builders, he was both very determined and very skeptical. It’s like [former Intel CEO] Andy Grove says, ‘only the paranoid survive.”