My life as a writer consists of 1/8 talent and 7/8 discipline.

He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.

When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.

I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why? Because wrestling requires even more dedication than writing because wrestling represents the most difficult and rewarding objective that I have ever dedicated myself to; because wrestling and wrestling coaches are among the most disciplined and self-sacrificing people I have ever known.

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.