The thing to remember when you're writing is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader.

The beginning of a friendship, the fact that two people out of the thousands around them can meet and connect and become friends, seems like a kind of magic to me. But maintaining a friendship requires work. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Good art requires work as well.

It's all those stories and how they braid together that tells us who and what and where we are

When one of my characters becomes aware of a magical element, it might be because the world is wider than we assume it to be, but it might also be a reminder to pay attention to what is here already, hidden only because it's been forgotten.

I can’t imagine it now, but I must’ve been innocent at some time in my life. A baby don’t just get itself born bad, do it?

From the first time he'd met her, he'd sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people's art and ideas.

There's bad apples in whatever way you want to group people - doesn't matter if it's religious, political or social. The big mistake is generalizing.