You can't write a novel all at once, any more than you can swallow a whale in one gulp. You do have to break it up into smaller chunks. But those smaller chunks aren't good old familiar short stories. Novels aren't built out of short stories. They are built out of scenes.

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

Mom," said Peter, "nobody thinks you're a lackwit, if that's what you're worried about." Lackwit? In what musty drawer of some dead English professor's dust-covered desk did you find that word? I assure you that never in my worst nightmares did I ever suppose that I was a lackwit.

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.

Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.