“Have you never heard what the wise men say: all of the future exists in the past.”

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning. Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it’s always nice to know where you’re going is my theory.

Really being friends is the most important part, I think, of any relationship.

Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can’t have too many friends because then you’re just not really friends.

Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.

It’s better to look at the sky than live there.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.

It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.

How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, 12 hours sleep a night, and lots and lots of make-up.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.

Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc – it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move.

Death is less bitter punishment than death’s delay.

If all you can do is judge a person by their appearance because you don’t have the spirit to judge someone from within, you’re in trouble.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

Greatness and madness are next door neighbors and they often borrow each other’s sugar.

You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

At the end of the day, whether or not those people are comfortable with how you’re living your life doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you’re comfortable with it.