But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it. You prime a pump with your own water, you work the handle with your own strength. You do this because you expect to get back more than you give.

Practice is invaluable... honesty is indispensable.

Love isn't soft, like the poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.

As a species we're fundamentally insane.

The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out.