I am not alone in bearing grudges against reviewers who have doomed a book's chances because they've missed the point, the tone, everything.

the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.

You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

Clouds are poems, and the most moving poems linger on the blackboard so long, written in cursive so lovely, they also exist inside our fingertips. We never really erase them at the end of the lesson.

You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.