“Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.”

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 sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.

I would much rather be known as the mother of a great son than the author of a great book or the painter of a great masterpiece.

Don’t be afraid to go to your library and read every book as long as any document does not offend your own ideas of decency.

There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, “now what?

I spent a lot of time drawing and writing little comic books, and my mom was a rapper, so I would steal her instrumentals.

I don’t even hate books anymore.

Everyone probably thinks that I’m a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite when the truth is I’d rather read a book.

In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to discipline a child is still a mystery to most fathers and mothers Only your grandmother and Genghis Khan know how to do it.