You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.

Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

There are some advantages to being a writer: you do generally get better as you get older. I think I understand things better. When I was a kid, I was kind of guessing at the emotion. Now I'm interested in writing more difficult books, books that confront the facts of life, of death and dying and failure - the majority of life. You write outwardly imaginative books when you're younger. When you're older you apply imagination to internal experience.

You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.

You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die.