I don't think you could teach someone to be a genius, but you can certainly teach them to not make rookie mistakes and to look at writing the way a writer looks at writing, and not just the way a reader looks at writing. There are a lot of techniques and skills that can be taught that will be helpful to anybody, no matter how gifted they are, and I think writing programs can be very good for people.

The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.

The handy thing about being a father is that the historic standard is so pitifully low.

Drunk, Jane spoke as though she were Nancy Drew. I was a fool for a girl with a dainty lexicon.

His dreams had always been Houdiniesque: they were the dreams of a pupa struggling in its blind cocoon, mad for a taste of light and air.

No; he could be ruined again and again by hope, but he would never be capable of belief.

There was a sort of irony in the fact that these [superhero] characters - many of whom in that period, the Golden Age, had been evolved to fight the Nazis - were themselves very much in the Nazi ideal. The idea that you can solve problems through physical strength, by being stronger and more dominant and more powerful - that is fascism. I mean, that's it, that's the essence of fascism. I don't think the creators of the superheroes or the kids who were reading them at the time were the slightest bit aware of it.