I love writing shorter fiction.

The books do pretend, Mr. Branagan. Surely. But that is not all. Novels are filled with lies, but squeezed in between is even more that is true – without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

Unlike New York or Chicago, once you were inside Boston, any point in the city was fairly convenient to any other.

Avoid the Holy Grail, the heroic journeys, the pursuit of a legend – that is not the life of the bookaneer, who must keep his eyes on the ground while other book people live by dreaming.

You are always better off to read a book, anyway, than to meet the person behind it.

It is my conviction that we make ourselves who we want to be and not chain ourselves to the notions of busybodies who wish to judge us.

When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing.

On the trees were no longer only leaves but brown fruits, on the bushes no longer blossoms but clusters of red berries. And the wind had a rough manliness in its voice – the tone not of a lover but of a husband.

What’s the use of having eyes if we can’t see the world we pass through?

I was looking for something else in books. I could not really say what, but I think I can say why: a notion started in my own brain was probably wrong, but an answer read in a work of literature would be right. That was my conviction at nineteen, and only in later years would I come to trust myself over a book.