Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
The scariest moment is always just before you start.
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.
That wasn’t any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.
A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.
There's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.
Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair.
Do it for joy and you can do it forever.
Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction. If not so, why do so many couples who start the evening at dinner wind up in bed?
When it came to the dark fuckery of the human heart, there seemed to be no limit.
A boy who once wiped his ass with poison ivy probably doesn’t belong in a smart people’s club.
Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map.
He knew as well as we in our own world do that the road to hell is paved with good intentions – but he also knew that, for human beings, good intentions are sometimes all there are. Angels may be safe from damnation, but human beings are less fortunate things, and for them hell is always close.
Time and tide wait for no man.
Few if any seemed to have grasped the Principle of Reality; new knowledge leads always to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search.