Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.
Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way.
Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.
Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time
...with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.
In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.