I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

No," said a voice, "the only thing wrong on a night like that is that there is a world and you must come back to it.

Get the big truth first. If you get the big truth, the small truths will accumulate around it.

Fire the doubters out of your life.

These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be.

Every time you take a step, even when you don't want to. . . . When it hurts, when it means you rub chins with death, or even if it means dying, that's good. Anything that moves ahead, wins. No chess game was ever won by the player who sat for a lifetime thinking over his next move.

You have to learn to take rejection not as an indication of personal failing but as a wrong address.