In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.

Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works.

The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.

Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.

With any novel that you begin, you can't foresee how difficult or easy it's going to be, and you can't really prepare yourself. You just have a take it one step at a time and know that it's all right to keep going - you can always fix it.

Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind; one of its characteristics is that it doesn't recognize itself as ignorance.

A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice.