I can be glib and truthful all at once.

...aware, as always, that the truth isn't much of substitute for a good answer.

Sleep is over-rated. Have you ever noticed how it's always recommended to people anybody with half a brain can see need to wake up?

Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.

I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges.

People who imagine themselves to be self-made seldom enjoy examining the process of manufacture in detail.