“Books are a narcotic.”

Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. Thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.

You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.

Paths are made by walking

Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

Please — consider me a dream.

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.

Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don’t surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.

Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.

Love is a drama of contradictions.

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

You only need to change your direction, said the cat, and ate it up.

People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as ‘nauseatingly miserable beyond repair’.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.

I really wanted to write a book [99: Stories of the Game] on the tradition and history of the league, where kids can pick it up and read it and learn things and say, “Geez, I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool.”

I am a beau in nothing but my books.

The experience of writing ‘The Kite Runner’ is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.

Life doesn’t come with an instruction book; that’s why we have fathers.

Education today is a process of filling the mind with the contents of books, emptying the contents in the examination hall and returning empty-headed.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

I’m glad I wrote the book to show what I found out about the [ Standard Oil Company]. I’m glad many people read my book and found out the truth.