Envy is one of the scorpions of the mind, often having little to do with the objective, external world.

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part that is obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass.

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.

To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.

Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.

How we learn is what we learn.

The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.

I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.

The moment is a gracious gift.

The guy had guts—I had to give him that. Later on I was hoping for a first-hand look at them.

Schools themselves pervert the natural inclination to grow and learn into the demand for instruction.

Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden.

Dying was apparently a weaning process; all the attachments to familiar people and objects have to be undone.

Farms produce a lot more than food; they also produce a kind of landscape and a kind of community.

So, Beav, tell me about yourself." "I'm Blue." "Sweetheart, if I had your dubious taste in men, I wouldn't be too happy, either." "My name is Blue. Blue Bailey.