The third stage was the reaction that came when the body struggled to compensate for its ills - when, for instance, the white count not only returned to normal but increased to much higher than normal levels.

Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.

Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.

When the writing is really working, I think there is something like dreaming going on. I don't know how to draw the line between the conscious management of what you're doing and this state. . . . I would say that it's related to daydreaming. When I feel really engaged with a passage, I become so lost in it that I'm unaware of my real surroundings, totally involved in the pictures and sounds that that passage evokes.

It's a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense.

To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over...

The final test of a work of art is not whether it has beauty, but whether it has power.