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.

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

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

You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter.

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.

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.