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

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.

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.

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

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

Don’t judge a tree by its size, but by its fruit.

The women cried with one another, and it didn't seem to matter whether you were Jewish or Christian, you just mourned.

You tempt the devil, ” he whispered then laid his head down and sighed. “Angels always do.

But for me, from my point of view, I don't mind if it falls over... if you break the glass you replace the glass, if the sheep falls out you can always get a new sheep.

Your children will become what you are; so be what you want them to be

With every adversity, there is an equal or greater gift. Keep looking for the gift.

You have to live a life to become a writer.

You can be greater than anything that can happen to you.

The way I formed my studio and how I organize things actually came out of the model of the Japanese animation studio and the manga industry. The manga industry is gigantic in Japan.

When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur.