“The writer's job is not to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here I am,” but to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here YOU are.”

“You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up.”

“I tell writers not to think about writing short stories or novels. Just write one good scene. And then a novel becomes a bunch of good scenes stacked on top of each other.”

“The novel I am constantly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced-up or torn-apart book of myself.”

“Maybe it goes without saying that if you want to become a famous writer before you’re dead, you’ll have to write something. But the folks in my classes with the biggest ideas and the best publicity shots ready to grace the back covers of their best-selling novels are also usually the ones who aren’t holding any paper.”

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