I don't trust compliments. I've been getting them for years. Sometimes I deserve them, sometimes I didn't. But generally when people give you compliments there's one of two things wrong with them. Either they're false, or what's worse is they're sincere. They really mean the compliment. And then they're offering you their loyalty. And I'm kind of a stingy... Well, I don't necessarily want to give all that loyalty back. So either way, let's skip the compliments.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Amateurs... venture into scenes that a writer with more experience (and more professional concern) would bypass or eschew altogether.

No heart is so hard as the timid heart.

Somewhere, something incredible happened in history - the wrong guys won.

Patterned after an Italian Renaissance palace, it is 88 times as large and one millionth as valuable to the continuation of man. that Pentagon of traveling salesmen.