To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.

Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.

Envy is one of the scorpions of the mind, often having little to do with the objective, external world.

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

We are constantly telling ourselves what we most want to know, and at the same time are deaf to it. Why does envy have such a fierce bite? Why do we fall silent or get worried just as our story is about to spring out of our control and into its own life? Whose shadow falls across the page?

To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.

Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.