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The thing to remember is that no one ever finds out that you don’t know what you’re doing.
My least favorite received idea about writing is that one must find one’s voice, as if it’s there inside you, ready to be turned on like a player piano. Like character, its very existence depends on interaction with the world.
The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn’t that they’ll remember; it’s that you’ll remember.
The pleasures of a long relationship are the things that you never quite learn about the other—the ways in which you remain strangers.
The well adjusted seem to distribute their fear across their lives, not just keep it in one area, so it seems to disappear.
In twenty years I have had four students who could listen with superhuman attention. All of them were dancers.
Rest is the term used to describe the mind’s retreat to the background of consciousness. But one must control the attention exquisitely, without giving too much to the immediate surroundings or to things of the imagination, without overtraining the focus, without getting sleepy. It’s hard work, learning how to rest like this.
People like to tell my very successful friend that they, too, intend to write some books. He always answers, with big eyes and a ghoulish smile, How hard could it be?
Certainty is the opposite of thinking; I’m certain of it.
An adjective is comparative, but so is a noun; an apple is something that isn’t anything but an apple. It helps to remember this when tempted to use an adjective.
Given a year’s pay up front, I produce almost nothing. Given a month’s pay, I produce what otherwise would have taken a year. Given nothing, I work when I can. Time and production must bear some relation to each other, but I couldn’t say what it is.
Achieve a goal and suffer its loss.
