Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper than that.

Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale.

It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.

When I'm writing, I am concentrating almost wholly on concrete detail: the color a room is painted, the way a drop of water rolls off a wet leaf after a rain.

From the window, above the clatter of pots and the slamming of cabinets, Francis was singing, as though it was the happiest song in the world: 'We are the little black sheep who have gone astray . . . Baa baa baa . . . Gentlemen songsters off on a spree . . . Doomed from here to eternity . . .