The great happiness in life in creativity belongs to amateurs.

Much in our lives is chance.

It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'--and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.

I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called 'culture' - and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species.

I come from people who did not go to college. They didn't even finish high school. People who one might call ordinary Americans who are very hardworking.

I think what distresses me most in my life is that I have so many ideas I consider exciting ideas that I will never live to execute because it takes me so long to execute.

Writing allows for fictitious voices - the voices of persons unlike myself - that might otherwise be muted.