She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.

I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.

Tall, aren't you? I didn't mean to be.

I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.

Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.

The more you reason the less you create.