“Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy.”

“Keeping up the fiction. You have to keep it up, sometimes, no matter how you feel.”

“As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers--a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of college students aspire to the writer's trade and where bare hundreds actually break through.”

“Never trust anything a fiction writer says about himself.”

“Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.”

“Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -”

“Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.”