Stories are artifacts, not really made things which we create and can take credit for, but pre-existing objects which we dig up.

I think the best writers are voracious readers who pick up the cadences and the feel of narration through a number of different books. And you begin by maybe copying the style of writers that really knocked you out.

The only [working] ritual is making tea. I use the loose leaves and drink it by the gallon.

Love is what moves the world, I've always thought...it is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down...bring them low...and make them crawl.

For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.

I'd like to learn French well enough to write in that language.

Your hair is winter fire January embers My heart burns there, too.