The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.

文学是使不可见之物可见的艺术。

History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use.

The body is a prison, and language is the key.

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.

Every hour, she thinks, someone forges the rings, someone carves the cradle, someone loses the war.