Finn whispered, "What has a head, thorax, and abdomen, but stands six feet tall?" "A snowman?

I'm about to read Scott Turow's 'Innocent.' I've been hungry for this book since he first told me it was in the works. I'm a serious Turow fan.

The way you get better is putting words on the page and getting them behind you.

There's a fine line between imagination and reality. An inventor dreams something up, and pretty soon, it's there on the table before him. A science-fiction writer envisions another world, and then some space probe finds it. If you believe in something strongly enough, I think you can make it happen.

What do you care more about? The kids or your hair?

For the first-time novelist you've got to get up at 5:30 in the morning and write until 7, make breakfast and go to work. Or, come home and work for an hour. Everybody has an hour in their day somewhere.

As a young boy, I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely, but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer, where one of the most needed qualities is patience.