“That to me is the way any good romantic would look at his life: Live it first, then write it down before you go.”

“Did I go out of my way looking for trouble, you ask. Well, not exactly. Perhaps it was the inner voice that warned me that someday I would write it all down, so it better be entertaining.”

“I was going to click my heels and go home, where life would be, as it is anywhere, a little bit dull Knasas, a little bit great and terrible Oz. I just wanted to stand here for a minute, first, and fix in my memory the life I wasn't choosing, the way Rajiv looked at me before I told him I was leaving, the cottonwood snow.Nathan watched me, an uncertain look on his perfectly, terribly familiar face."Are you ready?" he said”

“You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.”

“Write the ending first and then you'll know before the opening sentence that it's going to be a good book.”

“If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.”