As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

Laughter... is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny.

I don't take notes; I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing. I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. You can't sell it as caviar.

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.

As always at these times when he felt really in need of God the front of his mind was serene, but the deeper part, where faith did constant battle with doubt, was terrified that there would be no answer.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

I did a couple of writing seminars in Canada with high school kids. These were the bright kids; they all have computers, but they can't spell. Because spell-check won't [help] you if you don't know through from threw. I told them, "If you can read in the 21st century, you own the world." Because you learn to write from reading.