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 leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.

Most universities are no longer temples of knowledge, but of power, and true moderns worship there.

I like to deal with EVERY aspect of our condition, and that means terror and humor in equal mix. Some books have more room for humor than others.

I always enjoyed the kids, but I didn't enjoy the bureaucracy of the educational system.

Like all of us in this storm between birth and death, I can wreak no great changes on the world, only small changes for the better, I hope, in the lives of those I love.

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.