The imagination conjures gifts; what the ungrateful, unsentimental part of the mind has to do is to unwrap them, find fault with them, see them for what they are and then alter them.

Forget the boring old dictum, 'Write about what you know.' Instead, seek out an unknown yet knowable area of experience that's going to enhance your understanding of the world and write about that.

Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be.

In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.

The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

When you've finished a piece of work you've had a kind of love affair with it.

Kept falling in and out of it [sleep] like out of a boat or a tipping hammock.

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.

I can inhabit any character in a way that is difficult to do successfully in a contemporary novel.

Pray, and let God worry.

Are we insane? The moment we awake, we shall acknowledged God as the Divine Being.

I'm moving down here . . . because some of you in the back might not be able to hear my talk . . . and that wouldn't be fair to those who can hear it.

Here's proof that if you live long enough, anything is possible.

You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter.

Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.

I'm not for raising taxes on anyone - period.

I feel good, and the way I determine it is through my workout. I work so hard in the offseason that if I'm able to do everything I have to, I figure I must be healthy.

You write who you are. But you also cheat, and youwrite what you want to be. It's embarrasing to be the guy who madethe movie, knowing you're not exactly who you want to be.

My experience is that inventors come in all sizes, all nationalities, all ages. The only thing I'm sure of is that inventors are always stubborn.