The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.

And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do.

Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.

There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch.