every story written is marks upon a page The same marks, repeated, only differently arranged

Someone from the Internet Writing Workshop sent me a link to the Gender Genie, where you paste in a section of text and it uses an algorithm to detect whether the author is male or female. Or, if you're an author, you can tell whether you're really nailing your opposite-sex characters. I mean, nailing their dialog.

She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn’t mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute.

Corporations! It's like there are these gigantic monsters living among us, and we don't mind that they're monsters because when we look at them they smile and hand us cheeseburgers. That's nuts.

I think this is the first time I've altered a book based on what you guys told me. So it's an occasion! Soon I'll be putting up polls to choose between plots, and then it's a short stop to accepting anonymous contributions and stapling them together while I sip margaritas on the deck of a Pacific cruise ship.

That's the thing you learn about values: they're what people make up to justify what they did.

When someone thinks, "I liked his last book, I'll hope this new one is good" and shells out their hard-earned, I fervently want that person to be thrilled.