It's as if God gave you something-all those stories- and said, "Here you are. Try not to lose it." But children lose everything unless somebody is there to help them, and if your parents are too stupid to do it, maybe i ought to.

I win, you win. You win, I win. The gun, I win. The fruit, you win. I win, you win.

We'll just have to get along. That's what people do, you know? They just get along. And try to help each other.

Too often, in novels that are speculative, God is a kind of kryptonite, and that's about all that it is, and it goes back to Dracula, where someone dumps a crucifix in Count Dracula's face, and he pulls away and runs back into his house. That's not religion. That's some kind of juju, like a talisman.

The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your paragraphs forming on their own.

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it's too late.

And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters' mouths, you'll find that you've let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism.