We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel.

Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen.

We tap our toes to chaste love songs about the silvery moon without recognizing them as hymns to copulation.

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.

How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.