I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor.

I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.

The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

If you feel afraid of magic, then you've been enchanted.

Her self lagged behind her anger, like a mother picking up after a destructive child.

There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.

Work, which is considered an expression of a person’s value, also becomes a part of one’s spirituality and achieves the higher aim of the Supreme Good

I'd never been a tall guy, and the girls I'd dated had all been my height--teenaged girls grow faster than guys, which is a cruel trick of nature.

A fly was very close to being called a land, because that's what it does half the time.

I am apt to be harsh in my secret judgments of others, seeing them as defective because they are not enough like me.

Even if you don't have anything, even if you've got a quarter in your pocket, to share with someone else who has nothing really helps.

Could we have prevented in 100% certainty? I don't think anything is that certain. However, we would have had a very, very good chance for preventing it.

I have scary eyes. I look like the guy in 'American History X,' yes. I remember coming home from school and asking my mum if I could get an eye transplant, and of course she declined.