But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.

Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

When it came to formal classes, I was a slacker. But I've always been a diligent autodidact and can teach myself virtually any subject if I have a serious interest in it.

Love and sausage are alike. Can never have enough of either.

All these girls swooning over hunky vampires, what they really want is to give away their freedom, to be controlled and told what to do and not have to think -- and never die, of course. It's sick is what it is. I don't want to be a forever-young living corpse.

I have advice for new writers, first of all, at any time in the history of publishing in my experience, there will be endless number people telling you that you can't do what you are trying to do. You won't succeed, there's something else you should be doing.