“A verbal contract is worth about as much as the paper it's written on.”

“Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.”

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

“No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life.”

“Please write music like Wagner, only louder.”

“This music won't do. There's not enough sarcasm in it.”

“I wish i could tell you that through the tragedy i mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that i could pass on to you.I didn't.The cliches apply-people are what count,life is precious,mate...”

“One of the most common platitudes we heard was that words failed. But words were not failing us at all. It was not true that there was no way to describe our experience. We had plenty of language t...”

“Given the situation I had gotten myself into, I just chose the path that seemed most likely to succeed and did the best I could. But Shota died so suddenly. His death ripped open a deep fissure in ...”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”