Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more.
There’s an essential order you have to follow in everything. It’s a way of showing respect, following everything in the correct order.
Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.
The good thing about writing book is that you can dream while you are awake...
If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I’d never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit.
I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.
Writing talent is similar to the art of chatting up a girl. You can improve to a certain degree through practice, but basically you are either born with it or you aren’t.
The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls.
The facts and techniques or whatever they teach you in class isn’t going to be veryuseful in the real world, that’s for sure.
As long as possible, I would really like to complete one marathon per year. Though my time has been slowing down as I get older, it has become a very important part of my life.
The honour of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.
Everything. Things you lost. Things you’re gonna lose. Everything. Here’s where it all ties together.
I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt but I was wrong.
Stories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.
I have no idea! I have been writing for 35 years and from the beginning up to now the situation’s almost the same. I’m kind of an ugly duckling. Always the duckling, never the swan.
What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.
Not that running away’s going to solve everything. I don’t want to rain on your parade or anything, but I wouldn’t count on escaping this place if I were you. No matter how far you run. Distance might not solve anything.
I’m not human. I’m a piece of machinery. I don’t need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead.
I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.
If she did experience sex-or something close to it-in high school, I’m sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.