The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured

I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.

She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live.

I don't wait to be struck by lightning and I don't need certain slants of light in order to be able to write.

And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.