Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

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.

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

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.

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.

Sometimes I dig holes for people to fall in. Then I shout, “I've got you!

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether.

A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous.

A lot of punk rock. I listen to various stuff just cuz my friends now listen to a lot of different bands. I listen to a lot of underground stuff like jungle music.

It is the state of mind of the person wielding the instrument that determines to what end it will be put.

When you live in surrender, something comes through you into the world of duality that is not of this world.

I had given up practising my Jewish religion when I was a 14-year-old girl and did not begin to feel Jewish again until I had returned to God.

Control your generosity when dealing with a chronic borrower.

All other species on this planet are gene machines only. They don't imitate at all well; we alone are gene machines and meme machines as well.