“Ah! candid and unadulterated mind! you have learned early to reflect; but take care lest this habit, hitherto so well applied, should totally unfit you for society. It will strew thorns in your pat...”

“I have heard that all ideas of equality are visionarythat they can never be realizedand I believe it. But surely, though there must be hewers of wood, and drawers of water, they ought to have the a...”

“They say I am a reformer. They say wrong: for I have long since given up any such chimerical idea, as that of being able to make men happier who are wicked and miserable by prescription. Withdrawin...”

“It has been said that Shakespeare, the great delineator of human character, has failed in distinguishing his principal womenand that such as he meant to be amiable are all equally gentle and good. ...”

“Turn your thoughts to novel writingnarrative, let it be about what it will, is read, because the mind quietly acquiesces, and it requires no trouble to think about it. On your part it will demand m...”

“I was told, and indeed I saw several examples, that neither time nor place was much minded, and that I might hazard being equally careless of chronology and geography; but I piqued myself on having...”

“And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very...”

“Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I w...”

“The calling of an author is more than just to entertain, but also to share ones experiences with the world.”

“Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper edge of his window frame. A pair of very soft, clean glistening black shoes a...”

“As we stood there, chest high in water, I felt like I was in the middle of my own romance novel.”

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express my...”

“A new novel awaits my arrival, prepares for my careful inspection. Yet a novel is always a long dream that lives in me for years before I know where to go to hunt it out.”

“The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on. Given the general oddity of writers, no wonder there ...”