If I'm not working, I'm not happy. That's it. That's the prerequisite for me for happiness.

Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.

She closed her eyes, dark-lidded, dark shadows beneath them; she really was older, not the glancing-eyed girl I had fallen in love with but no less beautiful for that; beautiful now in a way that less excited my senses than tore at my very heart.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

Character, to me, is the life's blood of fiction

I think it's especially important for an editor to say what he's enjoying. For a novelist to be told, midstream, what he's doing right can actually influence the unwritten parts of a novel in a positive way - praise helps a writer know what's good about what he's written, what's interesting and exciting, and what to work for in writing the conclusion.