I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

Don't quit. It's very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it's very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can't get fired if you don't write, and most of the time you don't get rewarded if you do. But don't quit.

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

Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book.

My own sense of the world is that very little is absolute or black and white or easily understood. I suppose in all my writing I'm trying to cast the reader into this spiritually ambivalent dream world, which hopefully mirrors more honestly the complex reality we find ourselves in.

Talent is cheap. What really matters is discipline.

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