If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.

My work is writing, but my real work is being.

What my children appear to be on the surface is no matter to me. I am fooled neither by gracious manners nor by bad manners. I am interested in what is truly beneath each kind of manners...I want my children to be people- each one separate- each one special- each one a pleasant and exciting variation of all the others

We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

You live and die according to what goes on in yourself, which no one else can even begin to know, not even father, mother, wife, son, or daughter.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.

I believe in anything that works.