I'm not a natural criticizer - I prefer to like and praise and so on.

Someone told me once - I mean I said, "Is it ok that I don't really know what the three-act structure is?" And he said, "It's basically: Act 1: a guy climbs up a tree; Act 2: people come and throw stuff at him; Act 3: he gets down."

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

I believe that, when [meeting of writer and reader] happens and the reader goes out into the world the next day, there's some alteration that might possibly inflect the person positively.

If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience.

I feel that there is nothing that can happen to a person that is banal. Everything that happens to us is interesting.

The switch that I'd like to throw on is the one that says, "Look, you're a human being whose mind is every bit as active as anybody else's. Your experiences are just as real." For that matter, even if they're even if they're crazy, they're valid. They occurred in this world so they're valid topics for literature.