Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It's a strange world, why make it stranger?

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it.... The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: "It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.