“Good writing is always new.”

“The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or a new thing in an old way.”

“If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good”

“What matters in the end in literature, what is always there, is the truly good. And -- though played out forms can throw up miraculous sports like The Importance of Being Earnest or Decline and Fall-- what is good is always what is new, in both form and content. What is good forgets whatever models it might have had, and is unexpected; we have to catch it on the wing. ((p. 62, Reading & Writing)”

“I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.”

“I want to write. I have always wanted to write. I do not care it I am not good at it. I just want to try.”