But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them.

I have no plans to love you," said Coraline. "No matter what. You can't make me love you.

The stuff you bring back from dreams is free.

They were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one ever really wins or loses but which can go on forever, if both parties are willing.

When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive.

We make choices. No one else can live our lives for us. And we must confront and accept the consequences of our actions.

If writing a novel is a year's exile to a foreign country, writing a short story is a weekend spent somewhere exotic. They're much more like vacations, more exciting and different, and you're off.