The stories we hear in our childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.
I just saw myself as a novelist.
The wind makes you ache is some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die – migrate or die.
Black as night and as beautiful as forever.
Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.
A man who lies about beer makes enemies.
No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.
The worst advice? ‘Don’t listen to the critics.’ I think that you really ought to listen to the critics, because sometimes they’re telling you something is broken that you can fix.
When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.
I think most of us are fascinated by the macabre and by the weird and even the nastiness that comes along.
Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.
The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.
The battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.
But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.
A product is something made in a factory; a brand is something that is bought by the customer. A product can be copied by a competitor; a brand is unique. A product can be quickly outdated; a successful brand is timeless.
The first draft of a book – even a long one – should take no more than three months, the length of a season.
In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.
Say what you mean. Say what you see. Make a photograph, if you can, for the reader.
Small towns harbor small imaginations.