“Honestly,” he says, “I judge writers on how they write queries. If you’re a good writer, you’re a good writer.” And if not, then not.”

“One changes, as a writer, fairly quickly; what you wrote six months or a year ago might not sound right anymore.”

“She had such control of tone, in her text messages, she was the Edith Wharton of text messaging.”

“If you’re dating a writer and they don’t write about you — whether it’s good or bad — then they don’t love you. They just don’t. Writers fall in love with the people we find inspiring.”

“Each literature bears its freight of the eclipsed; each generation shows us writers in the process of disappearing.”

“I want to be an honest man and a good writer.”

“Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”