Apprenticeship is one of the dearest roles of childhood, not just watching Dad or Mother, but being taught a hands-on trade.

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

There isn't a thought or feeling that doesn't alter or deepen when written. We are a writing animal. That is why all of us feel we have a book inside us. It isn't an illusion. We have got a book inside us.

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

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