“Real people are made out of a whole lot of thingsflesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words.”

“The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge.”

“Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. Its all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.”

“Literary works are not democracies. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. We may, but the country of Novels, Etc., doesn't. In that faraway place, no char...”

“Reading is a full contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources. What results can sometimes be as much our creation as the ...”

“His argument runs like this: there is no goodness without free will. Without the ability to freely choose-or reject-the good, an individual possesses no control over his own soul, and without that ...”

“Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life. ...”

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

“You dont have to worry about getting the attention of others when youre good at what you do.”

“Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“Good literature is one key to peace. When we stop reading each other, when we stop paying attention to each other's words and stories, we too easily oppose one another.”

“There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book tak...”