“I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.”

Dear though the reader might be, I’d be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.

Don’t put things off till it’s too late. You are the DJ of your fate.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.

In a painting, you can’t make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist’s stroke.

For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.

I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.

I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.

You can talk good ideas out of existence.

God save us from people who mean well.

I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.

The past is the past, and he can’t make amends, only hope that the gain will outlast the damage.

I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I’m enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.

In life’s brief game to be a winner A man must have; oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.

I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.

I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.

The real war will never get in the books.

Literature is my Utopia

For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime.

I am a book of snow, a spacious hand, an open meadow, a circle that waits, I belong to the earth and its winter.

I love comic books. I just do.

I love comic books. I just do.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.