Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.

I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.

It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.

Human was the music, natural was the static.

People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.

Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.