The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind.

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

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.

Because one has written other books does not mean the next becomes any easier.

There is a time for work, and a time for love. That leaves no other time.

It's time to laugh at your nightmares and have nightmares of your laughter.

As a mother, you need to remember that a loving and compassionate God is one hundred percent aware of your child’s situation.

The rough must always accompany the smooth. Without one or the other one learns nothing about oneself.

We are all monsters.

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

My biggest dream was to ruin the lives of my readers and crush their souls... And I really think that worked out pretty well for me.

Sovereignty no longer resides in the territory itself, but in the control of the territory. And localisation is an inherent part of that territorial control.

A grove of giant redwood or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral.

So mayst thou live, dear! many years, In all the bliss that life endears