I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity.

How to Draw a Picture (XII) Know when you're finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life.

Every marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark

I'd been raised by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness.

Anyway, as the old barrelhouse song says, My God, how the money rolled in. Norton must have subscribed to the old Puritan notion that the best way to figure out which folks God favours is by checking their bank acounts.

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

She felt like someone who drowns remembering what it was like to still be on the boat, so calm and at ease, so carelessly safe