And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight-- isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before?

Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

He had a happy canine way of seeking approval without seeming insecure.

Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.

I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.

What he'd never understood about men in his position, in all the books he'd read and movies he'd seen about them, was clearer to him now: you couldn't keep expecting wholehearted love without, at some point, requiting it. There was no credit to be earned for simply being good.

The writer’s life is a life of revisions.