Any writer who pretends to a disaffection for recognition, I think they're being duplicitous.

I cannot pay attention to what people say about my work. For me, personally, I am just this shards-and-ashes human being, who really gets upset when someone says something bad about me. If it's true, I cop to it. If I have any good qualities, it's that.

I never send a story off until I have read it aloud to at least two or three people. Because when I read - and I don't need their criticism, what I need is my own - when I read it aloud, there is a flow, there is a poetry to it.

Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.

I have no mouth. And I must scream.

If you let the image of the messenger get in the way of whatever message there may be, however large or small, that's your problem, not his.

I can't picture in my mind three hundred and sixty thousand dollars... When I think of it, all I can see in my mind is a big nickel.