A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

A thing is incredible, if ever, only after it is told -- returned to the world it came out of.

But how much better, in any case, to wonder than not to wonder, to dance with astonishment and go spinning in praise, than not to know enough to dance or praise at all; to be blessed with more imagination than you might know at the given moment what to do with than to be cursed with too little to give you -- and other people -- any trouble.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

Fantasy is no good unless the seed it springs from is a truth, a truth about human beings.

The strands are all there; to the memory nothing is ever lost.

The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.