How we learn is what we learn.

Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.

The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook-the gilt-framed portrait of the book-right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear.

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part that is obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass.

The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.