Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either

In romance, as in life, you only learn when you're losing.

Sometimes you have to avoid mentioning things because people's feelings are tender.

You don't want to get that sort of sound in your writing that boing that gives you away.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

I can write anywhere. I write in airports. I write on airplanes. I've written in the back seats of taxis. I write in hotel rooms. I love hotel rooms. I just write wherever I am whenever I need to write.

Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success). but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood.