A story begins with this nebulous feeling that’s hard to get a hold of and you’re testing your feelings and assumptions, testing what you believe. They end up turning into keepsakes and mementos –like amber in which a memory gets trapped.

I don't think you could teach someone to be a genius, but you can certainly teach them to not make rookie mistakes and to look at writing the way a writer looks at writing, and not just the way a reader looks at writing. There are a lot of techniques and skills that can be taught that will be helpful to anybody, no matter how gifted they are, and I think writing programs can be very good for people.

As long as she was falling in love with me, I might as well start making her promises I didn't intend to keep.

The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.

Love is like falconry," he said. "Don't you think that's true, Cleveland?" "Never say love is like anything." said Cleveland. "It isn't.

Entertainment is a sacred pursuit when done well. When done well, it raises the quality of human life.

I don't have a problem with many uses of the word genre, just certain ones. I have the most trouble when these labels are used to prevent discussion, to prevent a work from being taken seriously as literature. When we say "genre," we generally mean "something crappy," something that would be sold in an airport.