To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

When you have dogs, you witness their uncomplaining acceptance of suffering, their bright desire to make the most of life in spite of the limitations of age and disease, their calm awareness of the approaching end when their final hours come. They accept death with a grace that I hope I will one day be brave enough to muster.

A silent dark...as black as a moonless lake, as a ravine's wings, darkness there and nothing more, merely this and nothing more.

I think it's the people who have no doubt that every word they put down is gold that probably don't write very well.

I realized you might make money at writing, and you might even make a living at it. So after that I didn't write stories just for the class but wrote them for the purpose of submitting them somewhere, and at some point in the process, I began writing them just to please myself and that's where you begin to see the real value of a life of writing.

When I'm in the middle of a book it can go up from there. When you're putting in those hours, the real world kind of fades and the world you're creating becomes almost more real to you than the outside world.

From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity.