I believe these stories exist because we sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives: the parent who punches instead of kissing, the auto accident that takes a loved one, the cancer we one day discover living in our own bodies. If such terrible occurrences were acts of darkness, they might actually be easier to cope with. But instead of being dark, they have their own terrible brilliance. . . and none shine so bright as the acts of cruelty we sometimes perpetrate in our own families.

And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night... and what your dreams are like.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.

Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.

Beating heroin is child's play compared to beating your childhood.

Until that afternoon in October four years ago, I hadn't known dogs could scream.