I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family.

Talent is cheap. What really matters is discipline.

I wonder if politicians know less about the land, now that they campaign by air.

We are all living this dance and it is clearly fraught with making choices. Lots of my choices are bad and that's normal. None of us are attractive at all times. What is attractive to me is authenticity.

I think the writer's job is to paint the gray because no life is clearly defined.

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, its self-consciousness. And if you have one eye on the mirror to see how you're doing, you're not doing it as well as you can. Don't think about publishing, don't think about editors, don't think about marketplace.

For the twenty million Americans who are hungry tonight, for the homeless freezing tonight, literature is as useless as a knowledge of astronomy.