"It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well."

"Uncertainty is the refuge of hope."

"Order is power."

"An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains."

"But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything."

"Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it."

"I write it to get it out of me. I don't write it to remember it."

"I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen."