Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

I'm very comfortable writing.

The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

I believe, in my better moments, that there is a plan and things go not the way we want them to but the way they should.

It is said the sesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.

I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.