Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share. You learn to sing with, not argue at, your possible readers.

If you're being attacked from all sides, it's possible you're doing something right; it's also possible that you are doing everything wrong.

Wit and puns aren't just décor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.

Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.

I think that we're always drawn - particularly sophisticated people - are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.

After all, spinning is its own reward. There wouldn't be carousels if it weren't so.

Big writers become a kind of shared climate.