When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

Little children are all writers.

I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.

It reminded me of how children always thought too big

You know what insane people are, Alice?" the Pillar says. "They are just sane people who know too much.

a good part of the trick to being a first-rate scientist is in asking the right questions or asking them in ways that make it possible to find answers.

What is the spiritual purpose of the arts? It is to learn structure. Once an artist creates a true structure, then divine love can pour into it and make it a living thing of beauty.

If only I had discipline, but alas, it is only an obsessive-compulsive trait and the beauty of habit that causes me to return again and again to my work.

Braveness is resistance to concern, mastery of panic - not absense of anxiety.

I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live.

A good voice isn't so important. It's more important to sound really unique.

I hesitate to direct even though I feel I contribute a lot on a set.

The reality is, is that we love competition, at Apple. We think it makes us all better. But we want people to invent their own stuff.