My father always told me: 'Give somebody a hand and he'll take an arm.

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.

Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is

That's wrong," she declared. "Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it? But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

I used to run a full marathon in three hours and 25 or 26 minutes. Not any more.

Music always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque music on low in the background chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like.