At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.

If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.

With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.

Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.

I used to believe that love and happiness were synonymous. I was a fool. Love intensifies all emotions. Nothing is so painful o so sweet, so thrilling or so desperate... Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love thats essential. You are never so alive as when you love, never so alert, intuitive, attentive, never so smart or so compassionate.

Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When you read for understanding, you are fundamentally changed. You are a different person at the end of the story or the novel than you were when it began.

I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.