"Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done."
"A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo."
"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."
"Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer."
"Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick,""Huckleberry Finn,""A Farewell to Arms,""The Scarlet Letter,""The Red Badge of Courage,""The Iliad and The Odyssey,""Crime and Punishment,"the Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade"— are all about what a bummer it is to be a ...human being?"
"Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber."