What we know about writing the novel is the novel.

My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.

Each story tells me how to write it, but not the one afterwards.

The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.

If you haven't surprised yourself, you haven't written.

Once you're into a story everything seems to apply-what you overhear on a city bus is exactly what your character would say on the page you're writing. Wherever you go, you meet part of your story.

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming of themselves like grass.