But who knows what good might come from the least of us? From the bones of old horses is made the most beautiful Prussian Blue.

One is always enthralled, I think, when a young writer you're just beginning to read and comprehend dies.

As you grow older, you'll find that you enjoy talking to strangers far more than to your friends.

The writer trusts nothing she writes-it should be too reckless and alive for that, it should be beautiful and menacing and slightly out of control. . . . Good writing . . . explodes in the reader's face. Whenever the writer writes, it's always three or four or five o'clock in the morning in her head.

Words at night were feral things.

You must stop worrying about why things happen and wonder what they mean when they do.

There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process.