When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. It other words, the stuff of great books.

But in my experience, a writer gravitates toward a certain form or genre because, like a well-made jacket, it suits him.

There is nothing more refreshing for an editor than to meet a writer or read a query that takes him completely by surprise

There comes a time when you have to let go of the New Yorker fantasy in service of justing getting on with it [writing].

Beware of all writers who substitute initials for their give names -

It was a miracle to me, this transformation of my acorns into an oak.