When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.
One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.
What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.
Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.
It would be, for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish, flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity.
I couldn’t go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words – changing nothing.
Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.
There is no limit to desire but desire’s needs.
The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.
As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn’t do it, don’t.
I cannot believe such monstrous energy of grief can lead to nothing!
Poor Grendel’s had an accident. So may you all.
Great things happen nationally when topmost leadership is goaded and supported from below.
Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.
True happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents.
If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
The cynic says, “One man can’t do anything”. I say, “Only one man can do anything.”