Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.