One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.

I don't want to hurt myself. I want to stop hurting.

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

It's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.

No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.

The greatest sin is appearing naive or old-fashioned so that somebody can give you a sort of a very cool arch smile and devastate you with one extraordinarily crafted line that puts kind of a hole in your pretentious balloon.

I read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with all due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk.