The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.

For while agents and editors often misunderstand their market and sometimes reject good or even great works, they do prevent a vast quantity of truly execrable writing from being published.

A great novelist excels on the small scale and the large, the individual leaf and root as well as the forest; good fiction convinces us that the imaginary is real by selecting exactly the right detail and rendering it perfectly.

Adventure,' then, is what might otherwise be called hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit. Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself the right story about it, which is one thing that Lewis's child characters have learned from reading, 'the right books.

Fire will burn any human body it touches, and starvation will waste it, but stories are not so predictable in their effects.

In the year since we brought things into the open with a clean breath of fresh air at City Hall, we have learned about corrupt spending practices and unethical conflicts of interest that waste your money... and keep Dallas from being the great city of our dreams.

Nonfiction brought me back to earth and sobered me up whenever it seemed like I'd become too drunk on the lives and loves of imaginary people, but that doesn't mean it was any less thrilling or transporting, although it was often more illuminating.