If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.

Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.

Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.

Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.

Editors are licensed to be curious.

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.