“You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.”

“You're never confident. You go in fear and trembling every day. It would be awfully nice to think that you know how to write a novel. But what you know is the novel you just wrote. You don't have the slightest notion how to write the one you're going to do next.”

“You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.”

“You write your first novel with the desperation of the damned. You're afraid that you'll never write anything else, ever again.”

“Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.”

“It's difficult to teach how to write novels, but teaching swimming is just as hard.”