Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.

Awe consumes any brand that ignites it.

In the compact between novelist and reader, the novelist promises to lie, and the reader promises to allow it.

I was so mad at my agent. I had polished and polished and polished [the play], and he referred to it as a draft. I wrote him a bitter letter: How can you call this a draft? I don't do drafts! By now I've done 18, and its turning, in the rehearsal room, into a 19th.

We are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection is taken as a full-scale revolution.

The ordinary is the divine.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.