“Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.”

“First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge & enhance an idea, to reform it . . . Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.”

“There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go--if there are no doors or windows--he walks through a wall.”

“Life, despite their frantic yoohooings, had passed them by.”

“Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”

“We have two lives... the life we learn with and the life we live after that. Suffering is what brings us towards happiness.”

“What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.”