“Don’t try to write a novel. Write short stories and then figure out how to connect them.”

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

“Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.”

“Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.”

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”

“I do not use my intellect to write my stories and books; I have a gut reaction to the things that my subconscious gives me.”

“You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.”