Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

You'd be surprised how good writing matters when you're going after money.

If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.

I thank everybody in this book for coming. -A.W., AUTHOR AND MEDIUM

It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.