Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.

There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers.

I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.

The radical intelligence in the moderate position is the only place where the center holds. Or so it seems.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

There is a difference, of course, between real sentiment and the trash of shared experience.

My grandmother refused to concede that any member of the family died of natural causes. An uncle's cancer in middle age occurred because all the suitcases fell off the luggage rack onto him when he was in his teens, and so forth. Death was an acquired characteristic.