An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience.

I’m the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It’s just the opposite of love.

Any carefully planned thing destroys the creativity. You can't think your way through a story; you have to live it. So, you don't build a story; you allow it to explode.

The purpose of fiction is not to nail you to the ground as facts do, but to take you to the edge of the cliff and kick you off so you build your wings on the way down.

They walked still farther and the girl said, "Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?" No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it." Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.

I don't like the kind of writer who's out to change the world and beat up on people for their own good. Stalin did that and Hitler did that, and to hell with them.

When a man talks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry.