“You gotta be careful: don't say a word to nobody about nothing anytime ever.”

“If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're OK with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.”

“I don’t know what’s ahead,” I say. “I don’t know nothing about nothing but whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than what’s behind. It’s gotta be.”

“In my job, nobody ever says a word when you do something right, but make one mistake?”

“You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.”

“It was [John Gardner's] conviction that if the words in the story were blurred because of the author's insensitivity, carelessness, or sentimentality, then the story suffered from a tremendous handicap. But there was something even worse and something that must be avoided at all costs: if the words and the sentiments were dishonest, the author was faking it, writing about things he didn't care about or believe in, then nobody could ever care anything about it.”