The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.

When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.

Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.

Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.

And never forget, there is memory.