God pisses down the back of your neck every day but only drowns you once.

As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light. As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall. As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun.

You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand." He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's cold cheeks. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

A lot of fairy tales are thinly disguised hostility raps against parents. Kids know that they can't make it on their own, that if they were left alone, they would die.