Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is

You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.

Anything said in upper-crust British automatically sounded intelligent.

Conflict is the place where character and plot intersect.

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

Changers are characters who alter in significant ways as a result of the events of your story. They learn something or grow into better or worse people, but by the end of the story they are not the same personalities they were in the beginning. Their change, in its various stages, is called the story's emotional arc.