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.

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.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

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

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.

All my life I wanted to accomplish something worthwhile-a thing people will say took a little something.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.