When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside. It isn't like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there's a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.

I love research so much that I do an enormous amount; it helps put off the moment of starting to write the story.

She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.

... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

Im not supposed to be within two hundred feet of a school or a Chuck E. Cheese.

Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.

It's where I keep all my things. Get a lot of compliments on this. Plus it's not a purse, it's called a satchel. Indiana Jones wears one.