Also from the Dos Passos Prize reading,

“A writer is a reader moved out of emulation”

&

“After 35 years, I’m an overnight success”

&

“Writing on a computer…you may delete something you could later want. It’d be out there in the atmosphere somewhere”

“I often write the first draft of a scene with my eyes shut. [I've] put a stocking cap on my head to make sure”

And one, quoted by Haruf, from Frank O’Connor,

“What you have to do is get black on white”