If the stories come, you get them written, you're on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

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.

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.

Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.

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.

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go - if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.

If you don't hear His voice so let Him hear yours. When prayers go up blessings descend.