Success is not measured by bestseller lists. Certain types of great books sell very well; other types of great books don’t sell a lot. But they’re both great.

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.

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

We all make mistakes, but we need to learn from them and move on. You can own a mistake, or the mistake will own you.

Interests evolve into hobbies or volunteer work, which grow into passions. It takes time, more time than anyone imagines.

I can push myself and you can push yourself, but competing, we push ourselves a little farther and we bring out our best even if one of us wins and one of us loses. The virtue of competition is that we both get better, not that one does. And that means we have great respect for the opponents, whether we win or whether we lose.

Books have been my classroom and my confidant. Books have widened my horizons. Books have comforted me in my hardest times. Books have changed my life.