There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.

Teaching, real teaching, is - or ought to be - a messy business.

I believe some people are just too damn smart to write fiction.

I've never enjoyed myself. I'm incapable of enjoying myself. There's just some people who don't enjoy themselves very much.

Writing a book is like torture that you don't know, but after it's done and there it is. It's a joy like unlike anything else, I think it's the closest that a man can come to knowing what is feels like to have a baby.

We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why? Becauwse we really don't lov what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint, or to write poems - if you really loved it - you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not. ... Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love Nothing is allowed to die in a society of storytelling people.

Speaks well of a man to need a little something in this world. I wouldn't trust a man who could git through it cold sober.