Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.

Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.

Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.

This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.

I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.

Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything.