Losing well was a gift, but winning well is this stuff of the authentic manhood.

Comport yourself with grace under pressure.

I__e always felt a vague sense of guilt that I search for plunder and inspiration in every book or poem or story I pick up. Other people__ books are treasures when stories emerge in molten ingots that a writer can shape to fit his or her own talents. Magical theft has always played an important part of my own writer__ imagination.

Generosity is the rarest of qualities in American writers.

Generally, writers descend from a lesser tribe, and whatever claim to beauty we have shows up on the printed page far more often than it does in our mirrors. Even as I writer these words I think of dozens off writers, both male and female, who make a mockery of this generalization. But comeliness among writers is rare enough to be noteworthy.

People in the city are poor because they are oppressed, discriminated against and alienated; people in the country are poor because they're too stupid to realize they ought to be living in the city.