For honest insight into who you are, don't ask yourself what your priorities are for next week. Ask what your priorities were last week.

A community is a small group working together. Community scales by adding groups, and building connections between them, not enlarging them.

This is a slow business to have success in. There are exceptions, but for the most part it's kind of like the last writer standing.... I've got gray. I've got plenty of gray. I'm creating a career slowly, like a coral reef.

The burden of intelligence: you can always imagine all those wonderful places where you can never belong.

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.

I live for those rare and delicious moments when the words on the page take off and I am the bystander, watching as the tale shows me what will happen next.

Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.