The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

People do not change, they are merely revealed.

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.

God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same.

We do not always like the people we love- we do not always have that choice.

I have no place left to live but in my own heart.

The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

I’m really lucky with the people around me. They know me, so they don’t confuse the issues really. They know what a book is and they know who I am and they know the difference between the two.

There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I'm not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw the line.

Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

You have to be very, very good looking to get ahead in motion pictures.

Something feels funny. I must be thinking too hard.

It doesn't do you any service to demonize any group of people. It's much better to try and understand from the inside.

Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.

The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and, in particular, not in the least proletarian.

No structure of virtue can possibly be raised in our soul unless, first, the foundations of true humility are laid in our heart.

After Big Media, U.S. colleges and universities are the biggest enemies of the values of red-state Americans.

I will form good habits and become their slaves.

Those darker sides, the things that we don't want to admit about ourselves - that's what excites me.