The tougher the times, the more clarity you gain about the difference between what really matters and what you only pretend to care about.

Allow for many paths to your goal. Do not fixate on one path, because then you are likely to give up when that path is blocked.

If you want to give yourself a fair chance to succeed, never expect too much too soon

Make sure your characters are worth spending ten hours with. That’s how long it takes to read a book. Reading a book is like being trapped in a room for ten hours with those characters. Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling. If not, your reader will be bored and leave.

Love that has been tested is far more awe-inspiring than love that has never known anything but bliss.

I think when a reader reads a whole book - which takes six to ten hours - that’s kind of a gift to the author. The gift of close, undivided attention. To who else do we listen so closely for eight straight hours? And when readers give that gift to me, I’m grateful for it.

Testosterone is the hormone of collaboration and competition that, whenever we compete on a team, we collaborate with our teammates. And most of us in our daily life, to the extent that we have to compete with the rat race in the world out there, we're collaborating with other people at the same time. The two are hand in hand.