"Characters will come alive if you back the fuck off."

"Dubus frowns on writers' groups, believing they lead members astray from the work at hand.  His father told him that a novelist is like a whale submerged in the ocean.  You're down there alone, and you're supposed to be down there alone.  'It makes us face our own mortality,' he says.  'Working alone on a 300-to-400-page project for five years all by yourself brings you right to the starkness of coming into the world alone and leaving alone, as we all do.'"

"You're much closer to the dreaming side of your mind when you write.  Dream, dream, dream it through.  Write more with your body and less with your head.  Don't think a story through, don't think it out.  The danger of thinking it through is that most of us are not smart enough to do it that way.  We have to go one moment at a time."