What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.

People forget years and remember moments.

When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days.

Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock.

Clichés so often befall vain people.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

There is some reason, obviously, that you are drawn to your material, but the way in which you explore it might come to be quite different from what you would expect.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

I am going to stop mainlining my life force / Into your self-esteem: / Air pump girl blowing up boy rubber ball / You can stay flat and go nowhere by yourself

Being brave means you create the world you want to live in.

The success gate is far at the end of the long failure corridor. Keep moving no matter how many potholes you step into. You will get there with time!

He who fears a positive purposeful change fears growth.

A scar isn't about the injury, it's about the healing.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Christmas is a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man's pockets.

In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.

I hoped you would consider it seriously instead of laughing at it.' 'Mr. Chamkanni said much the same thing in bed the first night home from the hospital

Don't you ever want to see what's on the other side of the hill?