Get yourself in that extreme state of being next to madness. You should always write with an erection. Even if you're a woman.

Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is - and still not caring.

Actually, there are countless ways to live upon this tremorous sphere in mirth and good health, and probably only one way - the industrial, urbanized, herding way - to live here stupidly, and man has hit upon that one way.

He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that - his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths - but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.

We're making it up. The world, the universe, life, reality. Especially reality.

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.