Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

I only hope to do well enough before I die to have a house as big as my rich Uncle Ed and Aunt Carole.

I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking.

...when the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out of your own distant, hidden ranges, and all words become the dissolving snow that feeds your mountain streams forever. The language locks itself in the icy slopes of our own high passes, and it is up to us, the writers, to melt the glaciers within us. When these glaciers break off, we get to call them novels, the changelings of our burning spirits, our life's work.

When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children

... silence (can) be the most eloquent form of lying.