Kill your darlings.

Civilization began with distillation.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all - what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to s…

A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.

I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.