Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.

I’ve always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself.

The narrative was too constricted; it was like a fetus strangling on its own umbilical cord.

Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field.

The world is divided up into two kinds of people - those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don't.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

The professional guts a book through - in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve.

There are two types of people ... the scrutinizers and the scrutinized

The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind.

Because one has written other books does not mean the next becomes any easier.

Anytime I was denying my inner self, I knew absolutely nothing.

People sometimes say the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal.

Sing a song correctly and you live forever.

There was even a time when Donald Trump didn't get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged against him.

She's awfully fond of Wendy,' he said to himself. He was angry with her now for not seeing why she could not have Wendy. The reason was so simple: 'I'm fond of her too. We can't both have her, lady.

The quality of CGI, audiences are now so used to it. They don't know what is CGI and what is real.

Excellence is a signal to God that we are going to dig our ditches but if You don't make it rain, all of this is a waste of time.

My own will and desires were now very much broken, and my heart was with much earnestness turned to the Lord, to whom alone I looked for help in the dangers before me.

An egg is always an adventure; the next one may be different.

The only true hope for civilization-the conviction of the individual that his inner life can affect outward events and that, whether or not he does so he is responsible for them.