“By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens in his mind is primarily pictures.”

“In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery...”

“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.”

“Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.”

“Evan Handler's new book is simply wonderful. He pulls you inside his life, and you come out his very close friend.”

“Every writer dips his brush into his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”