My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years-she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

Because that's what heaven is...it's opening the door of a house in twilight and everyone you love is there.

So, whenever I'm writing, I'm writing in the presence of all the other books I've read and I think we all are.

I like to break left when people think I'm going to go right.

It was possible, he understood, for a person's life to become just a long series of mistakes, and that the end, when it came, was just one more mistake in a chain of bad choices. The thing was, most of these mistakes were actually borrowed from other people. You took their bad ideas, and for whatever reason, made them your own.