Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part that is obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass.

Envy is one of the scorpions of the mind, often having little to do with the objective, external world.

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.

To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.

Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.

How we learn is what we learn.

The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.

As with the future, it is not all at once but grain by grain that one savours the past.

Even on the worst days I am without a doubt still happier doing this than I am doing anything else. On acting.

None are deceived but they that confide.

I don't mind being slightly fat-ish, I just don't want to be fat.

What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

No white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

My music is very emotional. The reason why I want to play music is very emotional. I want to call out my emotions and package them into music.

You want a novel to tap as directly as possible into your most unspeakable preoccupations. And in America, in particular, cricket is pretty unspeakable.

Nothing can come out of nothing, any more than a thing can go back to nothing.

Paul patted Mrs. O'Leary's snout. The living room shook —BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—which either meant a SWAT team was breaking down the door or Mrs. O'Leary was wagging her tail. I couldn't help but smile.