“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?

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.

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.