Sometimes I feel that the world is made up of sensible people who know the plot and bloody idiots who don't.

We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.

When you are present, the world is truly alive.

I have students that I tell, "If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around." The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.

I am free to write the worst junk in the world.

In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write.

So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.

Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.

In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.

There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.

We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.

The world is an inherently unfair place.

I learned that realism can come in all shapes and sizes. The world is big enough for different values to coexist.

How much do you love me?' Midori asked. 'Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,' I said.

That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.

This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the world.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world.

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

It's not me but the world that's deranged.

If you want everything to be nice and straight all the time, then go live in a world made with a triungular ruler.

You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.