If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.

Skip the boring parts.

I don't have any of the modern stuff. I don't have e-mail. I don't have a computer!

I don’t think writers compete, I think they’re all doing separate things in their own style.

If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.