Books are flesh-and-blood ideas and cry out, silently, when put to the torch.

They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale.

We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.