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 was always my own teacher.

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

A story is not the same thing when it ends as it was when it began.

To imagine yourself inside another person...is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.

A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories.