The principle of literature is devotion to the particulars of life.

The secret of literature, which conventional people don't guess, is that writers are forever looking for the surprising revelation - not for reinforcement of collective wisdom.

The six and one-fourth hours' television watching (the American average per day) which non-reading children do is what is called alpha-level learning. The mind needn't make any pictures since the pictures are provided, so the mind cuts current as low as it can.

I don't engage in self-censorship. But I do change everybody to have red hair in the last draft. ... If you give people red hair when in real life they haven't got red hair, I've noticed they don't recognize themselves, anyway.

The more original a short-story writer, the odder looking the assortment of things he or she puts together for a story.

It is very difficult to teach navigation theory to someone who clings to the shore.

An essay is a work of literary art which has a minimum of one anecdote and one universal idea.