“Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.”

If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.

One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.

We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.

Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.

You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

It’s so funny when people who are not used to making movies get into it. You just can’t believe how insufferably boring it is.

That was how Ren turned my boring life into an illusion, and that was too much for no matter how hard i tried, it seemed I could never catch him.

Doing anything when you’re bored is very very boring. Anyway, doing nothing is the point of being bored.

It sounds so lovely in French. So I took that because it was the subject: I and myself and myself and I. Which is, in a way, boring, because it is a contradiction.

It would be terribly boring to be earnest.

There’s a very Neanderthal quality that still exists in a lot of men… And if you’re in the public eye, to me, it’s very boring to say what you have to say and be media trained to the extent that you don’t ever reveal any truth.

Trouble can be a lot of fun. It’s the straight and narrow that makes life tedious and boring.

The only rule is don’t be boring.