As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on my side; sooner or later the best-selling writers of the sixties and seventies would either die or go senile, making room for newcomers like me.

Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.

The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy.

The bad ideas kind of just drop out of the mix. You forget about them. The good ones stick around.

It's a hard life if you don't weaken.