Voice really depends on the answer to the question, Who is telling this story? . . . That will color your diction-and determine your metaphors, your sensibility.

The only way to write a novel is to proceed as if you had all the time in the world.

You have to roll up your sleeves and be a stonecutter before you can become a sculptor - command of craft always precedes art: apprentice, journeyman, master.

We create an interior 'movie' in the reader's head through words on the page.

It's not enough simply to record the way people actually talk. The dialogue must be concentrated, shaped, dramatically moving, in a way that real-life conversation seldom is.

For the big stuff to work credibly, you've got to get the little stuff absolutely right.

The habits of craft, developed day in and day out over a working lifetime, create moments of astonishment, sublime and magical effects, precisely because the writer is not thinking overtly about making art.