There is no sound more peaceful than rain on the roof, if you're safe asleep in someone else's house.

I've always thought sleep was a wonderful invention. Not that being awake isn't nice too, of course. But when I get up in the morning, I think, boy, only fourteen more hours and I can be back to sleep again ... And I never dream, because it distracts my mind from pure sleeping.

Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.

I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.

Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.

I don't want to say I hear voices; well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own.

I love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.