I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

Little children are all writers.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.

The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Life is full of chances and changes, and the most prosperous of men may in the evening of his days meet with great misfortunes.

Making a big commercial movie is hard when you think about how many of them flop.

It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.

I base jumped off the Jesus statue in Rio de Janeiro.

Our eyelashes brushed like they would weave together by themselves, turning us into one wild thing. I say, “I think I missed you before I met you even.

Starbucks is planning to close down all the restrooms in its New York locations. Which explains the most popular new Starbucks order: An empty cup.

I don't know why it surprises people that I surprise them.

What is immoral for an individual to do, is immoral for a government to do

Taking sartorial risks and not following other people is what makes you stand out.