There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.

The great thing about writing: Stay with it ... ultimately you teach yourself something very important about yourself.

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.

... we are all terribly alone no matter what people say.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness.