“My advice: write down everything you eat. It's amazing what that "self honesty" can do for you. (Do you really want to have to confess that doughnut? I thought not.) ”

“I don't have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we're having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might have died.”

“Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write.”

“I would quit while you’re ahead. Really. It’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself. That’s my advice to you.”

“If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.”

“You have no right to tell me-""You do not want to finish that sentence, missy. You want to sit down, close your mouth, and eat.""How am I supposed to eat with my mouth closed?”