“Now there's some honest writing!”

“There's a difference between writing for a living and writing forlife. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises....If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest,not what pays”

“Fiction writing feels more honest to me.”

“Some of us, I imagine, write out of anger; some out of pain; some write out of prejudice or loss, some out of passion, the promise of something better, perhaps the belief that—even now—a book can be capable of changing a life. Some of us write to remember, some to forget; some to change things, some to ensure things stay the same. Some of us—as my editor and agent will all too easily testify—write because we cannot stop.”

“There is no normal. There's only what's right for you and being honest.”

“If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.”