A writer must say yes to life.

Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.

Friends open the door for me to write. Then I get paid attention to and it allows me to write other books. The Great Spring and the thirtieth anniversary of Bones just came out and while I'm happy and excited about that, I've already finished a new book. That's what practice does. You don't get caught.

I am free to write the worst junk in the world.

You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.

I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life.

Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.