Time doesn’t, as advertised, heal all wounds. Although the wrenching immediacy of grief eventually passed, the settled sorrow that replaced it might in its own way be even more intense.

Doubt is poison. It leads to a loss of faith in yourself, and in all that's good and true.

The dead are merely the countrymen of my future.

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.

I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.

If I drive myself to the brink of my ability, then I don't get stale or bored.