The material of literary talent is words; the material of story talent is life itself.

Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.

Oh, by the way, I tend to use a lot of profanities. I do that for a reason: I like it.

No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.

No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.