There's never any humongous next draft. I know a writer who every time he finished a novel - you would know his name very well - but his editor would come and live with him for a month. And they would go through the manuscript together.

Always, beneath every apparent chaos, order waits to be revealed.

She says what holds their marriage together is that she feels too damn sorry for him to ask for a divorce.

I can't go on to page two until I can get page one as perfect as I can make it. That might mean I will rewrite and rewrite page one 20, 30, 50, 100 times.

Never, never try to scope the market.

A short-order cook, just off work, makes easy tracking for lions and worse

What will happen will happen. There is time for miracles until there is no more time, but time has no end.