Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it.

We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.

Now panic beats and flutters inside my skull like a flock of starlings locked in an attic.

Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.

I'm still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.