Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.

The facts, however, are unimportant in fiction. It's not the events of my life that I mine, but the emotional experiences I've had.

Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.

There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

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

You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and sex must be as bright as the future you gamble.

As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.