“It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.”

“The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

“It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.”

“Socrates having heard Plato read the Lysis, said, "O Hercules! what a number of lies the young man has told about me." For he had set down a great many things as sayings of Socrates which he never said.”

“writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all”

“I loved writing about things when I was excited about them. It's not fun writing about bad movies. I used to think it was bad for my skin. It's painful writing about the bad things in an art form, particularly when young kids are going to be enthusiastic about those things, because they haven't seen anything better, or anything different.”

“Writing is more about discovery than invention.”

“There is something powerfully beguiling about the excited eyes of a young woman. They can pull all manner of nonsense out of a foolish young man, and I was no exception to this rule.”

“The second person to write a story about a young boy and an escaped slave on the Mississippi wasn't a novelist, he was a typist.”

“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”