Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

The poet nothing affirmeth and therefore never lieth.

For a book to function... it has to be a functioning reality. The character has to be real, and I imagine that's exactly what happens for a spy who is in deep cover.

We're also far enough from the publishing power that we have no access to the politics of publishing, although there are interpersonal politics, of course.

You have to learn how to write each book.

The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.

I loved that it was about human relationships and then it was a mystery without falling into the trap of a thriller per se, because it pulled you in through people rather than through events or...

Here are a few of the actors who have brought my novels to TV life: Bill Pullman, Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, Julian Sands, Gena Rowlands, Rob Lowe, Julia Ormond, Chelsea Hobbs, Tate Donovan,...

Even in my most solipsistic moments, I don't regard my literary debut as a matter of global interest.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.

I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.

Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it is not widely distributed.

Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young,...

I am a romantic, in a literary way, by which I mean the Romantic poets, who thought just because a sensation is fleeting doesn't mean it isn't valuable. If the only criterion of value is whether...

I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I've always read poetry; I've always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.

In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.

We read our children stories starring elephants and monkeys and bears to teach them about nobility, curiosity and courage, to warn them against selfishness and stubbornness.

The oldest book I have is a treatise on architecture from the 17th century.

At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf...

At high school, instead of the weekly essay, I would write a poem, and the teacher accepted that. The impulse was one of laziness, I'm certain. Poems were shorter than essays.

If it's a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means...

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

To all to each a fair goodnight And pleasing dreams and slumbers light.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business.

Hope that star of life's tremulous ocean.

For a country to have a great writer is to have another government.

In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquility; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used to be free...