Aspiring writers should read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.

There's only a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.

We are only possible as what happened to us yesterday. We all change as well move

Without a sense of place the work is often reduced to a cry of voices in empty rooms, a literature of the self, at its best poetic music; at its worst a thin gruel of the ego.

You have to beat your own problematic imagination to discover what it is you're saying and how to say it and move forward into the unknown.

Anger makes people stupid.

Everyone is interesting except the narrator in a first-person story.

Well-lit streets discourage sin, but don't overdo it.

Roscoe was spiritually illegal, a bootlegger of the soul, a mythic creature made of words and wit and wild deeds and boundless memory.

Only a bet on the impossible makes sense. It is an act of faith and courage requiring an irrational leap over reason. A man wins simply by making such a bet.

Play the game of peace, not the war.Play, not with gun, but with laughter.

A fashionable woman is always in love - with herself.

Knowing how to age and not being afraid of aging is very healthy.

A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference.

In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity - it is a prerequisite.

What assurance do I have that your parenting isn't screwing me up?

Style is having the courage of one's choices and the courage to say no. It's good taste and culture.

Men are always murderers, and their calmness and generosity is the calmness of a well-fed animal, that knows itself out of danger.

Love has these three stages, and compassion accordingly has three stages, and both can exist in different combinations.

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.