Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face.

Of course there is nothing that cannot be done incorrectly.

A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light.

You must stop worrying about why things happen and wonder what they mean when they do.

The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.

Nothing we do is inevitable, but everything we do is irreversible.

Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve--hopeless ly he writes in the hope that he might serve--not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace that knows us.

Words at night were feral things.

There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process.

One writes to find words' meanings.

There is a certain type of conversation one hears only when one is drunk and it is like a dream, full of humor and threat and significance, deep significance.

Sometimes it's not always straightforward, but it's not always confusing either. You just have to respect a person's decisions without disrespecting them.

Beauty lies between the erotic and the tragic.

A slave that acknowledges its enslavement is halfway to its liberation.

I was never one to seek out the spotlight.

It goes as it does,Argetlam.You cannot hurry perfection.

Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

If there were no contradictions and no struggle, there would be no world, no process, no life, and there would be nothing at all.

The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success and failure.

When I danced, I felt I was entering the temple of Art.

I wanted to leave Eight Is Enough for the Navy.