You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself
Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer-so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible.
To create anything… is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic.
Reading gives one something to think about other than one's self.
We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games, though. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games.
A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.
Fun is not the same thing as fulfillment.
Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.
If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another as in his own.
The art of angling, the cruelest, the coldest and the stupidest of pretended sports.
Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.