A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers.

Write relentlessly, until you find your voice. Then, use it.

I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.

I think if you write humor, then people don't - you know - they don't give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I'm not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy.

I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking.

I'm not afraid to write about madness. I always figure that whatever most embarrasses you is something that everyone can relate to, really...because we're just not that different. So if you think, 'Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can't possibly talk about that,' and you write about it, the audience is gonna be like, 'that happened to me!

No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try.