I wish I could go back and re-write my first novel for the first time. Because I really didn't know what I was doing, and although it was published, it is, after all this time, kind of an embarrassment.

I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do.

The actual Blue Rose murders, which lie at the core of the three novels, yield various incorrect solutions which assume the status of truth.

You cannot overestimate the role of intuition in fiction writing. Or the role of accident or randomness. These things are very central. This is never really admitted. You have to cover the pages. You have to have those people do things. And the things they do have to be relevant to the entire concern. The specific things they do don't much matter, you just have to have them do something that counts.

Occasionally.. .what you have to do is go back to the beginning and see everything in a new way.

Wolves and those who see them are shot on sight.

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.