1. “A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is—full of surprises.”
2. “Children don't read to find their identity. They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology. They detest sociology. They still believe in good, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation and other such obsolete stuff.”
3. “Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.”
4. “Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.”
5. “If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.”
6. “It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.”
7. “I was brought up to believe in free will. Although I came to doubt all revelation, I can never accept the idea that the Universe is a physical or chemical accident, a result of blind evolution. Even though I learned to recognize the lies, the clichés and the idolatries of the human mind, I still cling to some truths which I think all of us might accept some day.”
8. “Life is God’s novel so let him write it.”
9. "No doubt the world is an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world."
10. “No technological achievements can mitigate the disappointment of modern man, his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution and terror. Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him.”
11. "Of course I belive in free will. I have no choice."
12. “Originality is not seen in single words or even sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.”
13. “Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.”
14. “There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.”
15. “The sexual organs are the most sensitive organs of the human being. They are not diplomats. They tell the truth.”
16. “The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual -- when it begins to ignore the passions, the motions -- it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.”
17. ”The wastebasket is a writer's best friend.”
18. “Whatever doesn’t really happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn’t happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year. What difference can it make?”
19. “What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.”
20. “When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.”
21. “When literature becomes overly erudite, it means that interest in the art has gone and curiosity about the artist is what's important. It becomes a kind of idolatry.”
22. “When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.”
23. “While the poet entertains he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet--whom Plato banned from his Republic--may rise up to save us all.”
