We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes.

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

I do know that I need solitude, not only to write but to nourish myself (being, like most writers, an introvert) so that I do keep trying to write.

The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.

Everything comes in useful once in a hundred years.

The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains.

Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.