Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living.

The idea I pursue is the one that keeps coming back to me. The characters I think about as I'm falling asleep at night or when I'm driving to the grocery store are the one's I wind up writing about.

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

You see an absolutely brilliant film later, as an adult, and you walk out thinking about what to have for dinner. Whereas something like Jaws winds up having a huge effect on me. If only my parents had been taking me to Kurosawa films when I was eight, but no.

There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.

You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.