Of course I've enjoyed having the Nobel Prize, the prestige that goes along with it, the money that came with it in particular. I was the typical, still am to some extent, impecunious writer, just struggling to make ends meet, so that, nobody's going to deny that at all. In fact, if they want to give it to me a second time, I'm standing by, ready to receive it, but it's a problem, it's a real problem and then expectations and then you have monsters like Sani Abacha who come up from time to time and who would have died a happy man if he'd succeeded in hanging a Nobel Laureate for literature.
Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.
We have to be willing to give up all the injustices of the past that did exist - and that do exist right now. When we become interested in liberation, we then become interested in that which transcends time.
Personal satisfaction is the most important ingredient of success.
I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?
To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.
If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.
A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.
This inhuman world has to become more humane. But how?
And in down times it shakes a lot of the bad SF out, a lot the stuff that was bought for literary reasons, which is neither entertaining nor great literature.
Would that well-thinking people should be replaced by thinking ones.
The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, a general preparation for whatever the student may afterward choose for more particular application. The power of drawing, modeling, and using colors, is very properly called the language of the art.
How blessings brighten as they take their flight.
News reporting is a cycle: No matter how much you work at sending a message, it's only successful if it's received.
Life without literary studies is death.
This race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex.
It’s all right to hesitate if you then go ahead.