A book's flaws make it less predictable.

Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.

A fish has no concept of water.

Don't hoard the past. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.

And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty seperate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.