Quote Category

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can’t do anything anyway.

But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people’s weirdness in that way.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.