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

The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve…something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness — those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings.

Of course there is nothing that cannot be done incorrectly.

Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face.

A side benefit of the new and developing technologies is that soon we won't have to feel guilty about the suffering and denigration of the animals because we will have made them up.

The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.

Nothing the writer can do is ever enough.