Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all .... as long as you tell the truth.

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.

At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.

Animals don't know as much about jealousy as people, but they're not ignorant of it, either.

I like to always stop with a couple of pages that I haven't - that are just raw copy, where I haven't touched it, I haven't tried to revise it, I haven't tried to polish it. It's like having a little bit of a runway. The next day when you sit down, you have the comfort of saying, well, I have got a little bit here, used to be in the typewriter. Now it's in the magic box, the computer.

Some tears have to be cried no matter what the hour- until they are, they simply rave and burn inside.

It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.