I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.

When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.

Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.

It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.

Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.

If you don't compromise your gift, if you write each day as well as you can, and then submit your work and not worry about it and go on to the next piece, you suddenly find oddly enough that you're no more interested in the applause than the silence. You don't hear either one of them. You can never listen to the naysayers. If you do you won't survive.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.