I don't want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world and opted for the Home Shopping Network instead), but there was a view among the student writers I knew at that time that good writing came spontaneously, in an uprush of feeling that had to be caught at once; when you were building that all-important stairway to heaven, you couldn't just stand around with your hammer in your hand.

I think everybody has experiences from time to time they can't explain. They are peculiarities. Usually we just dismiss them because they are uncomfortable to think about.

I start work around 8 a.m. and usually finish around noon. If there's more to do, I do it in the late afternoon, although that isn't prime time for me.

...writing fiction...is no job for intellectual cowards.

Writers write. That's all it is. It is as simple, and as complex, as that.

I believe that the combination of pencil and memory creates a kind of practical magic, and magic is dangerous.

People seem to think there's a magic formula to writing, i just write 1 word at a time.