I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn-that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you're a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale.

If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

But the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.

When there aren't any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.