I Have An Ambition To Write A

Other People’s Words Are So Important. And Then Without Warning They Stop Being Important, Along With All Those Words Of Yours That Their Words Prompted You To Write. Much Of The Excitement Of A New Novel Lies In The Repudiation Of The One Written Before. Other People’s Words Are The Bridge You Use To Cross From Where You Were To Wherever You’re Going.

My Short Stories Have Always Pushed Twenty Pages. That's No Length For A Short Story To Be. You Either Do Them Short Like Carver Or You Stop Trying.

Every Genuinely Literary Style, From The High Authorial Voice To Foster Wallace And His Footnotes-within-footnotes, Requires The Reader To See The World From Somewhere In Particular, Or From Many Places. So Every Novelist's Literary Style Is Nothing Less Than An Ethical Strategy - It's Always An Attempt To Get The Reader To Care About People Who Are Not The Same As He Or She Is.

You Are Never Stronger...than When You Land On The Other Side Of Despair.

For Ridding Oneself Of Faith Is Like Boiling Seawater To Retrieve The Salt--something Is Gained But Something Is Lost.