I think it's important to have an experienced writer or editor critique your work to get it ready to pitch an agent.

There is only the here and now. The past is gone, forgotten.

A dozen war reporters and TV crew, and the King Kong Elvis sang right on cue.

I think the writer makes a good story good or a good story bad. The writer has a great deal of responsibility.

How much maltreatment and exploitation could someone handle before losing self-control?

That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes.

When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.

I've figured out my learning curve. I can look at something and somehow know exactly how long it will take for me to learn it.

Around mile 20 I was feeling so good, I wanted to kiss everyone.

Just as not all popular albums are wonderful, not all wonderful albums are popular.

What I'm doing is a natural wonder. If not, there'd be 150 people behind me on the wire.

Contrary to all those times you've heard a writer confess at a reading that he writes fiction because he is a pathological liar, fiction writing is all about telling the truth.

We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field goes through every point of pumpkin history.

Wisdom is not the purchase of a day