I also write the last paragraph or page of a story first. That way I always know what I'm working towards.

She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.

I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

When you've got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas.

Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

Conscience is the most sacred of all property in which our contemporary government of criminals aspires to plunder from our compatriots by the means of unconstitutional surveillance.

Freedom and democracy are nothing but instruments, just like stability. The goal is called progress and growth. Anyone who puts freedom ahead of stability is hurting growth.

War will make corpses of us all.

I have a low opinion of books: they are piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention.

Only a lion can recognize a lion's roar.

Scientist believe in things, not in person

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

Where there is no great mortification there is no great sanctity.

Anger turns the mind out of doors and bolts the entrance.

I only get writer's block about once a day.