Nothing is more comical than seriousness understood as a virtue that has to precede all important literature

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

(memory is) A strange echo, which stores its replicas according to some other acoustic than consciousness or expectation.

The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.

We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.

The more a book is like an opium pipe, the more the Chinaman reader is satisfied with it and tends to discuss the quality of the drug rather than its lethargic effects.

To become a better you, admit that you were not born for the floor. Refuse to embrace mediocrity anytime anywhere.

Jesus came to give us life without leaving out any of life in the giving.

He was far scarier than any ghost could be. He was real, and he was a monster.

It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.

Each actor requires a different language.

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.

Problem with (John) Wockenfuss getting on base is that it takes three doubles to score him.

An awful lot of storytelling isn't really about making people understand - it's about making people care.

Our limbic system sets the mind's emotional tone and stores our highly charged emotional memories.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.