“One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.”

When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced.

It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.

Friendships are the family we make – not the one we inherit. I’ve always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

We cannot allow religious hooligans to place limiting points on thought.

What’s real and what’s true aren’t necessarily the same.

For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake.

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.

No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.

The only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

I don’t dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don’t want that to be dictated to me either.

Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’

If you’re offended, it’s your problem.

Dreams surely are difficult, confusing, and not everything in them is brought to pass for mankind.

In this very difficult moment for our world it is important we unite and support each other. Let’s all do what we can to help.

Relationships are like Rome – difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the ‘golden age’, and unbearable during the fall.

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.

The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

In an artist’s life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

The most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless.