“From that time forward it has been hard for me not to think of literature as created primarily to give writers the drinks they want.”

“One thing I've noticed since I quit drinking is that a person usually has two or three sets of impulses scratching away at some internal door at any given time. If you're sober--if you're alert, and paying attention to those impulses, and not yielding to the instinct to anesthetize them--you can receive a lot of guidance about where to go, what to do next in life.”

“Love—the desire to love and be loved, to hold and be held, to give love even if your experience as a recipient has been compromised or incomplete—is the constant on the continuum of hunger, it's what links the anorexic to the garden-variety dieter, it's the persistent pulse of need and yearning behind the reach for food, for sex, for something.”

“But then the wine came, one glass and then a second glass. And somewhere during that second drink, the switch was flipped. The wine gave me a melting feeling, a warm light sensation in my head, and I felt like safety itself had arrived in that glass, poured out from the bottle and allowed to spill out between us.”

“A novelist is similar to a triathlete. Train hard every day. You will be timed and measured. Budget to promote, grow, and be without fear.”

“Not only is there no way to make everyone happy, it’s nearly impossible to make anyone happy. And anyway, most people only think they want to be happy. Including me. There’s something wildly freeing about knowing that.”

“The more closely he has observed the tugboat, the more deeply he has been stirred by it, and the more eagerly and vividly he will strive to recreate it, in building, in drawing, in words.”