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

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.

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.

The simplest tool of the writer is repetition. . . . The simplest tool of the writer is repetition.

Storytelling is the art of unfolding knowledge in a way that makes each piece contribute to a larger truth.

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.

But a writing project begins not just in doubt but also in faith-that if your passion is genuine, if you have mastered the elements of your craft, in the act of writing you will learn the rest of what you need to know in order to do justice to your subject.