She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.

You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?

All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.

Kids are really tougher than adults, but we tend to forget this in an affluent society that lets kids indulge themselves.

If I'm writing by intuition, generally that calculation works itself out. But if I'm writing a mystery, and somebody has to have a reason for doing what he's doing, and it's not anything I can imagine myself wanting to do, things get a little more difficult to write, and careless mistakes are made.

I was no scholar in college, and was arrogant about what I thought.

Even the bad books I write are satisfying. I'm my least critical reader.