Great Throughts Treasury

"Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat."

"Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. Your life story would not make a good book. Do not even try."

"When I was a kid, the people of my generation didn't want to be writers, they wanted to be rock stars. Rock and roll was not just entertainment, it was the center of people's lives. When I was young, it was exciting and interesting."

"When Toni Morrison said 'write the book you want to read,' she didn't mean everybody."

"When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree."

"When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough."

"Whilst it is undeniably true that people love a surprise, it is equally true that they are seldom pleased to suddenly and without warning happen upon a series of prunes in what they took to be a normal loin of pork."

"When you reach a certain age, suddenly there are lots of people younger than you, which is really startling."

"Whenever I am doing anything else, which is most of the time, even if it is not something like robbing a bank, I feel felonious. Writing is what I'm supposed to be doing."

"Women who insist on having the same options as men would do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent type."

"Writers have problems writing sex scenes, because writing one really well is pornography."

"Writing is so hard. Why would you be a writer if you weren't really good at it? If you could be anything else, why would you be a writer?"

"You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness."

"Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try."

"Writing pornography is deadly, nothing duller. I mean a toll-taker has a more exciting life than a pornographer."

"You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do."

"You're only as good as your last haircut."

"Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success."