Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it was terrible we had no anti-lynching laws, and he was also a feminist, and he was also very concerned with anti-Semitism. He was a good man, but he was hard on himself.

Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.

An actress wants to be seen. An actress wants to be loved. By multitudes of people, not just one lone man.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Art is a means of memorialization of the past, a record of a rapidly vanishing world; a means of exorcising, at least temporarily, the ravages of homesickness. To speak of 'what is past, or passing or to come'-in the most meticulous language thereby to assure its permanence; to honor those we've loved and learned from and must outlive.

One man's insanity is another man's genius; someday the world will recognize the genius in my insanity.