“The one thing I've always done as an author is talk to my publicists. Because they have all the best stories - and they have all the dirt on other, more famous and important writers. They're not su...”

“No one expects the doormat to stand upright, shake itself off, and amble down the street to seek its own happiness.”

“Literary readings aren't going to shake their reputation as the added-fibre of our entertainment diet until the people who organize and participate in them snap out of this mentality.”

“I just have to trust that the story is going to shake out in such a way that's going to be palatable to readers.”

“No matter how committed a marriage, there will always be other people - those we have chemistry with and those we don't, those we are attracted to, and those who shop for functional outdoors wear. ...”

“There was a time when I thought dudes had friendship all figured out. The focus on eating things in front of giant screens, pretending to punch one another, competing over who can utter the grosses...”

“Lost Time is never found again.”

“How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever.”

“Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.”

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

“I stopped in front of a florist's window. Behind me, the screeching and throbbing boulevard vanished. Gone, too, were the voices of newspaper vendors selling their daily poisoned flowers. Facing me...”

“Daffy bent down suddenly, and picked a small startled white flower. "Anemone," he said, handing it over; he made her repeat the word until she had it right. "Find me a silk to match that.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”