“If a novel's salient aim is virtue, I want to throw it against the wall.”

“Get thee to the novel! - the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart's maelstrom.”

“A writer is dreamed and transfigured into being by spells, wishes, goldfish, silhouettes of trees, boxes of fairy tales dropped in the mud, uncles' and cousins' books, tablets and capsules and powd...”

“The novella will be called, I think, The Messiah of Stockholm. It takes place in Stockholm. Id better say no more, or the Muse will wipe it out.”

“Profound subject matter can be encompassed in small space - for proof, look at any sonnet by Shakespeare!”

“In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it's the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance.”

“And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.”

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

“Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.”

“To be of value to humanity, start by thinking for yourself.”

“Love is not an emotion. It is your very existence.”

“The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon ...”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”