Recruit for the future not just for the gap.

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

What a writer brings to any story is an attitude

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.

Stress is when you're 29 years old, playing for Rochdale, with an expiring contract and a mortgage to pay.

Wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess. It must be guarded with great discretion and good-nature, otherwise it will create you many enemies.

Not success. Not growth. Not happiness. The cradle of your love of life … is death.

For children who depend on mentally escaping into their minds to survive, imagination can become both refuge and desert island.

My color is my joy and not my burden.

I don't blame you for writing of me as you have. You had to believe other stories, but then I don't know if any one would believe anything good of me anyway.

I never had the blues; the blues always had me.

What we have is a gift from Him. What we do with what we have is our gift to him

Families aren't easy to join. They're like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.

A government of, for and by the people, requires much from the people.

When you can make others laugh with jokes that belittle no one and your words always unite, Hafiz will vote for you to be God.

Love is a thing that is full of cares and fears.