I think there's a necessity for some attachment to the spiritual world and, in a way, people really have to have it.

The lessons I learned that were most important were the ones that hurt my feelings.

You should let dialogue get as nearly out of control as you can. Characters should say what they say to each other instead of what they mean to say. The worst purpose of dialogue is to elicit information: "You know why we're out on this space station, Carruthers - to save the universe!"

There’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. ‘There it is.’

Everybody's after a new morning. What do we have to run up and salute tomorrow?

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

I think there's a necessity for some attachment to the spiritual world and, in a way, people really have to have it.