It's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.

Always mind the distance between your dreams and your reality.

For most people, honesty is such an unusual departure from their standard modus operandi - such an abherration in their workaday mendacity - that they feel obliged to alert you when a moment of sincerity is coming on.

When I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse.

I don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.

Somewhere between sanity and madness lays a fine line, for some it is a tightrope walked daily, a fight for balance to be won or lost. That fight is lost one of two ways. Some simply lose their balance and fall, others are pushed.

It's hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.