I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

No one else can hold your hand or take this voyage of the soul for you.

The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth

How wonderful it was to love something without the compromise of language.

Zen is the vehicle of reality.