The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer's sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.

I know it really sounds cheesy, but I did feel a duty to try to tell the stories of people who couldn't speak for themselves.

All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.

Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.

. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .

Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.

What good's a captive without her captor?