Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

All art is quite useless.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

I ain’t never called nobody no redskin. I’ve never been mad, like, ‚Get out of this restaurant, you redskin.‘

I’ve been reading tabloids since I was nine. I love a good story.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

The first story I finished was when I was six years old.

There is good and mediocre writing within every genre.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

‚Do you spell it with a ‚V‘ or a ‚W‘?‘ inquired the judge. ‚That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord‘.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

I can’t think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there’s been a reaction, there’s been no journalism. It’s cause and effect.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

I never write about the road. I never write about hotels or anything like that.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

I like being a writer.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

I don’t like two stories. I like one story. I never grew up with stairs. I like to stick to what I know.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn’t have connectives like ‚and‘ that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

Syllables govern the world.

If you’re in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what’s going on around you.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.

As I read more and more – and it was not all verse, by any means – my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don’t go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

I’m not a macroeconomics person.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‚infinitely‘ when you mean ‚very‘; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.