“You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing— your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal.”

“Vanity of vanities… all is vanity.’ You kill yourself to get to the grave. Especially you kill yourself to get to the grave before you die; and the name of the grave is ‘success’, the name of that grave is hullabullo boom boom horseshit.”

“vanity, vanity, all is vanity”

“You can get yourself pretty thoroughly lost, in time and space, if you don't know where you are or where you have just come from. How is this relevant to creative writing and writing programs? First of all, there is a certain amount of misinformation masquerading as assumed history -- as the story of creative writing in America.”

“Vanity, in a fairy tale, will make you evil. Vanity in the real world will drive you nuts. Vanity makes you say things like “I deserved a better life than this.”

“It's not vanity to know your own good points. It would just be stupidity if you didn't; It's only vanity when you get puffed up about them.”