Writer

I love rhymes; I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme 'oysters' with 'The Cloisters.' And 'The lady from Knoxville who bought her brassieres by the boxful.' I just feel a sort of small triumph.

I love New York, and I'm drawn to a certain intensity of life, but I've just never felt like I want to escape from the Midwest. A writer lives a great deal in his own head, and so one intuitively finds places where your head is more clear. New York for me is one of those places.

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore.

Tidak ada yang Anda lakukan untuk anak-anak yang sia-sia. Mereka sepertinya tidak memperhatikan kita, melayang-layang, mengalihkan pandangan kita, dan mereka jarang mengucapkan terima kasih, tetapi apa yang kita lakukan untuk mereka tidak pernah sia-sia.

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever.

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

I don't have a great eye for detail. I leave blanks in all of my stories. I leave out all detail, which leaves the reader to fill in something better.

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

I can write anywhere. I write in airports. I write on airplanes. I've written in the back seats of taxis. I write in hotel rooms. I love hotel rooms. I just write wherever I am whenever I need to write.

I think the most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that.'

A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded pistol on your coffee table - There's nothing wrong with them, but it's hard to stop thinking about it.

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

My religion would be a gentle faith that believed in the sacredness of leisure. Napping as a form of prayer.

A book is a gift you can open again and again.

I was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression, I became the editor of the campus literary magazine.

I think that if writers are tempted to do other things, they ought to go do other things. They should not write if they don't feel like it. I say this as a competitor. I am not interested in encouraging people who are in competition with me.