If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

I don't like the idea that I am going to come back as an ant or a sparrow if I don't get along in the great karma of life.

I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.

Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time.

All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.