Torture Yourself About Your Failures. And Then

When I Teach Writing, I Always Tell My Students You Should Assume That The Audience You're Writing For Is Smarter Than You. You Can't Write If You Don't Think They're On Your Side, Because Then You Start To Yell At Them Or Preach Down To Them.

I Think That Everybody Who Writes Believes That Their Work Has Some Kind Of Use-value, For Someone, That There's Some Need For It, Some Person Or Group Of People Out There Has Demanded That These Words Come Into Being. I Think That You Do The Work For These People. You Hope That You Can Make A Living At It. Whatever Your Ambitions And Needs Are In That Regard, Your Only Real Requirement Is To Try And Dig As Deeply As You Can Dig To Make Sense Of The Meaning Of Human Existence.

The Work Of Artists Is To Find What's Humanly Possible - Possibility's Furthest Reaches.

Constitutional Democracy Has Created Astonishing And Apparently Irreversible Social Progress. All We're Interested In Is Talking About When Government Doesn't Work.

I'm Not Religious, But I Like God And He Likes Me.