“The antidote to envy is one’s own work. Always one’s own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.”

We are constantly telling ourselves what we most want to know, and at the same time are deaf to it. Why does envy have such a fierce bite?

Why do we fall silent or get worried just as our story is about to spring out of our control and into its own life? Whose shadow falls across the page?

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook-the gilt-framed portrait of the book-right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it.

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

No matter how often you knock at nature’s door, she won’t answer in words you can understand–for Nature is dumb. She’ll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn’t expect a song.

And you loved me like I was, and had always been, the answer and the question did not, and would never, matter.

As there was never any question there was never any answer.

Suppose no one asked a question. What would the answer be?

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.

There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.

I just tell you and though I dont sound like it I’ve got plenty of sense, there aint any answer, there aint going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that’s the answer.