What matters is not publication or success (success is bad for your prose) but the practice of the imaginative act. Our damaged values depend on it.

Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page.

The human desire to know why is as powerful as the desire to know what happened next, and it is a desire of a higher order.

The only justification for writing a novel is that it should be wonderful. Adequate is inadequate.

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of rearing and peering from the bent tip of a grass blade, looking for a route.

Part of the trouble is that I've never properly understood that some disasters accumulate, that they don't all land like a child out of an apple tree.

In Literature, only trouble is interesting.

I sit and pass judgment on myself: this is dull, this is unclear, this is insignificant: ergo I am dull, I am unclear, I am insignificant.

What is the pattern of change?

If character is the foreground of fiction, setting is the background, and as in a painting's composition, the foreground may be in harmony or in conflict with the background.

You never needed wings to fly, You only needed love.

Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.

When you claim to have the truth, as opposed to the truth as you perceive it, then you move us toward a theocratic view of government.

If you ever think about giving up, remember why you held on for so long.

The better part of every man's education is that which he gives himself.

Oh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix.

No matter how fleeting Your smile is, Your smile is the very beginning Of your wisdom-light.

[On President Bush's plan to get to Mars in 10 years] Stupid. Robots would do a better job and be much cheaper because you don't have to bring them back.

Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons.

Cowards are nice, they're interesting, they're gentle, they wouldn't think of shooting down people in a parade from a tower. They want to live, so they can see their kids. They're very brave.