It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.

The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

Don't live in a way that makes you feel dead.

Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.

I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.