He had never been a social man. He had shunned causes with contempt and disgust. They were for pig-simple suckers and people with too much time and money on their hands.
He removed his unvaluable valuables and dumped his shirt, pants, and skivvies into a letter slot.
I’m a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami.
Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.
I’ve given up thinking – it keeps getting me into trouble.
There are a great many ways to commit suicide you know.
If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.
Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes.
There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.
But it’s hard for a man to give up all his pleasures, even when they don’t pleasure him no more.
People can be stunningly unobservant.
The cumulative power of doing things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind: You’re going to be dreaming soon.
Constant reading will pull you into a place – a mind-set, if you like the phrase – where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.
Fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically; mediocre fantasy fiction is about people who have it and never lose it but simply wield it.
I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground.
Let the word and the legend go before you. Let the world go before you. Let your shadow grow. Let it grow hair on its face. Let it become dark. Given time, words may even enchant an enchanter.
In bowling and in life, if a person made the spares, the strikes would take care of themselves.
City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself.
When facts speak, the wise man listens.
Lawyers are fleas on the hide of human nature.