I felt like you can write forever, but you have a short time to raise a family. And I think a family is a lot more important than writing.

Things you think you're saying for the first time ever, have been said better before by Shakespeare, though they may need saying again.

Tricker the Squirrel is the best piece I ever wrote. It's intricate.

Luckily, I remembered something Malcolm Cowley had taught us at Stanford - perhaps the most important lesson a writing class (not a writer, understand, but a class) can ever learn. 'Be gentle with one another's efforts,' he often admonished us. 'Be kind and considerate with your criticism. Always remember that it's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.'

I felt like you can write forever, but you have a short time to raise a family. And I think a family is a lot more important than writing.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.