The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true.

That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride.

Let the past abolish the past when -- and if -- it can substitute something better.

In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the natural grayness, becoming one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury or despair. "That was all I wanted," he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. "That was all, for thirty years. That didn't seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years.

Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind.