Quotes

There's only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best.

[on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature at age 87, in October 2007] They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now.

I've got a cat, Yum-Yum. She's a very difficult pussy cat. You have to treat her as if she were a princess. Otherwise she is impossible.

On strategy: What matters most is what we learn from living.

On growth: Long after an experience...it is seen quite differently.