“All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what’s cool.”

“One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.”

“A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.”

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”

“Probably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind...The immigrant, the nomad, the traveler, the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer becomes an exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an exile simply by opening a book.”

“WARNING: Brain dribble from a writer could cause good literature for the reader.”