The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

My mother was a reader, and she read to us. She read us Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when I was six and my brother was eight; I never forgot it.

I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing… I can always get a J. Crew catalogue… …So spare me, if you please, the hero’s ‘sharply intelligent blue eyes’ and ‘outthrust determined chin’.

It was the kiss by which all the others of his life would be judged and found wanting.

Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.

Disney cartoons are all rated G. It's really funny. There are kids all over the world who still have complexes over Bambi's father getting shot by the hunter and Bambi's mother getting crisped. But that's the way it's always been. This is the sort of material that appeals to kids. Kids understand it instinctively. They grip it.