everything is toxic. That's the point. You can't avoid toxins. Thinking you can is just another symptom of the toxic overload stage.

With any novel that you begin, you can't foresee how difficult or easy it's going to be, and you can't really prepare yourself. You just have a take it one step at a time and know that it's all right to keep going - you can always fix it.

A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice.

I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.

Respect and fear are two different things.

The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.

Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance.