I usually have poor to absent relations with editors because they have a habit of desiring changes and I resist changes.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

I am unlikely to trust a sentence that comes easily.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

Dare to Differ

And in that time, I lost my dad and had kids of my own. It was like, OK, I get it now. I know what fatherhood is all about. And you look at your parents differently.

I don't watch a lot of comedy. For relaxation and escape, I watch shows about how people survive bear attacks. Or old episodes of 'Law and Order,' the Benjamin Bratt/Jerry Orbach era.

I want families to come together, and on the corporate side, I want you to know that there are men out here who stand for righteousness.

I'm not in love with you.

You cannot live in Los Angeles for any period of time without eventually trying to write a screenplay. It's like a flu bug that you catch ... Even the plumber has a screenplay in his truck.

I had friends who only listened to hip-hop. I had friends who only listened to musicals, and I stood proudly in the middle.

It's important to every American that the law protect his or her basic liberty

You're nobody 'til somebody kills you.