The only way to know whats possible is to venture past impossible.

Whenever young writers ask me for advice, I always say you have to be able to take a lot of rejection because, unless you're very lucky, that's what's going to happen.

The art of integrating the ego and the impulse for empathy in a dynamic call and response.

When he held her that way, she felt so happy that it disturbed her. After he left, it would take her hours to fall asleep, and then when she woke up she would feel another onrush of agitated happiness, which was a lot like panic. She wished she could grab the happiness and mash it into a ball and hoard it and gloat over it, but she couldn't. It just ran around all over the place, disrupting everything.

The hurts of childhood that must be avenged: so small and so huge.

Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don't write fiction.

When you're writing a story, you're creating something of an artificial ending.