If I get a new idea today—or any day—I won't run from it. I won't trash it. If it's something I really want to do—I'll do it.

It's a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house.

How much better might human communication be if words were as precious as diamonds? If each of us were allotted only 100 words per day?

It was the day of the worms. That first almost-warm, after-the-rainy-night day in April, when you bolt from your house to find yourself in a world of worms. They were as numerous here in the East End as they had been in the West. The sidewalks, the streets. The very places where they didn't belong. Forlorn, marooned on concrete and asphalt, no place to burrow, April's orphans.

Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.

In my mind, I'm writing for everybody.

And the more you love someone, the safer it is to be mad at them. Love can handle mad, no problem.