“Whatever territory you choose to explore and then invest all your time into it, you will be amazed how easy it is to become great.”

“We often hear about stepping outside ourselves, but rarely about stepping outside our generation.”

“A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

“I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don’t normally get to go.”

“We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.”

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

“In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.”