Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.

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.

Envy is one of the scorpions of the mind, often having little to do with the objective, external world.

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

How we learn is what we learn.

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.