“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”

“I spend several years trying to get inside the brain and heart of my subjects, listening to the interior monologues in their letters, and when I have to bridge the chasms between the factual...”

“Even if there is endless documentation, it would be impossible to know what a man thought inside his own mind... This is where the novelist's creative imagination has to take over.”

“An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.”

“He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.”