Don’t go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can’t rush inspiration. … Once your subject finds you, it’s like falling in love. It will be your constant companion. Shadowing you, peeping in your windows, calling you at all hours to leave messages like, Only you understand me.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.

For years I felt that I wasn't ready to take on slavery. It's a huge topic, and I didn't want to mess it up.

I think being a writer was a crappy job when you just had typewriters. It was crappy when we just had ink and paper. And it's sort of crappy now. It's always just you and the page. That doesn't change.

The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged.

I write books and either people read them or they don't read them. The rise of Facebook or e-books doesn't change the difficulty level of writing sentences and thinking up new ideas.

What isn't said is as important as what is said.