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.

The past is a very determined ghost, haunting every chance it gets.

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.

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

Make no mistake, the organizations website counsels. You will be writing a lot of crap. And thats a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. I am not the first person to point out that writing a lot of crap doesnt sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, even if it is November.

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

Perfect love was that kind of love that made no sense but made everything else make sense somehow. It was raw and unscripted, turbulent and slightly unpredictable.