Want! You must want something. What do you want?

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.

There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody.

I try to help people become the best possible editors of their own work, to help them become conscious of the things they do well, of the things they need to look at again, of the wells of material they have not even begun to dip their buckets into.

There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.

Most of us dont live lives that lend themselves to novelistic expression, because our lives are so fragmented.