“One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it’s going to be told.”

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.

It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.

How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, 12 hours sleep a night, and lots and lots of make-up.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.

Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc – it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

The most dangerous thing in the world is to make a friend of an Englishman, because he’ll come sleep in your closet rather than spend 10 shillings on a hotel.

A man who doesn’t dream is like a man who doesn’t sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there’s no point in it….for me, every act of the art of solving a mystery.

There is only one unpardonable sin–deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Do not let your difficulties fill you with anxiety, after all it is only in the darkest nights that stars shine more brightly.

Russia is the biggest country in the world. It would be very difficult to surround it, and the world is changing so fast that it would basically be impossible, even in theory.

Today, music is great for entertainment, but it is lacking soul; it’s lacking substance, and it’s difficult to find good stuff.

We have to visualize a successful victory before we even start a very difficult challenge.

The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.

The difficulty for me is that I’m interested in so many different things.

As it is, relationships are difficult, aren’t they?

Life with another person is always difficult.