“You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.”

Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return.

“Then there are those who think their bodies don’t exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o’clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock.

Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers… that is a small population.

Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order.

There are important differences which should be preserved, and in trying to do away with those differences we would lose something the same way as if we tried to make all religions one religion or all races one race.

It is true that the arts at MIT don’t have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.

Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.

If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain.

I’ve taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it’s a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him – he is someone I really like.

I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness.

Writers are a loosely knit community – community is an overstated word. Writers don’t see each other very much.

I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country… people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force.

Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.