I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.

I was always on time, I did my work to exact specifications, I spoke when spoken to.

I read books I hate all the time, and I don't mention them or talk about them.

He used to say we all had a compass inside of us and what we needed to do was to find it and to follow it.

If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.

I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what? In my life I have met astonishingly good people.

Nonfiction is easy and fiction is hard.