The problem is fundamental... It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to declared that all of them should do it.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is bound to happen

That's when I feel most alive, he told me once on an airplane, when I'm helping people.

... "You may not see the ocean, but right now we are in the middle of the ocean, and we have to keep swimming.

The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.