“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”

“This is a writer’s lesson: To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.”

“It’s hard to land a devastating jab/cross/hook/uppercut combo to your reader’s imagination when you’re telegraphing your punches.”

“A successful novel should interrupt the reader’s life, make him or her miss appointments, skip meals, forget to walk the dog.”

“But none of them taught me the things I learned from Carrie White. The most important is that the writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader’s. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”

“I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing: it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.”