You're unusual. That's better than popular if you have some courage.

Before I got my present job, I spent many years teaching writing part-time, so-called, at community colleges and universities. It's academia's version of migrant labor.

Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose poetry as their vocation. I envy your faith.

I loved short stories, and they were all I wanted to write. I love the compression of them and the exactitude needed to get a whole world into such a small space.

Whatever one may say about the perils of workshops, they help writers internalize an awareness of audience.

I figured that to be a writer I would need to have been born in the nineteenth century, be British, or have three names. So I turned my sights elsewhere . . . to acting.

Unless you're Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates, no one's going to recognize you on the street, and you're promoting your book, not yourself.

Whatever we know as children, this is the world, eaten whole and without question.

The person who tolerates ‘exactly’ (with understanding) hands over his ‘case’ to nature. There is no need to punish anyone. Nature itself will punish him.

I’m not going to be like my mother. You’re maniacs. You’re mad.“Yes, ” said Kate. “I know it. And so you won’t be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?

Love is a precious gift which cost nothing.

Last night I'd made love to a woman for the first and last time. It had been amazing and I had a memory that would shape the rest of my life.

I remember Mick Jagger asking me 'hey, how do you guys feel about us coming over here and taking all the play from you guys?' I said 'Well, in a way, you have eliminated all my competition.

Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.

Taking on an iconic character is difficult, sure, people associate different actors with a character that you're playing, but there's something in rehearsing and developing a new character.

I'm a little drunk on you, and high on summertime.

I wondered at him, so wise and so foolish, to have lived with me all these months and not know that the worst storms break inside a man.

I am still the place where creation does some work on itself.