If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.

I worry about you Bev. I worry a lot.

You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.

And that almost killed you?" "It wasn't deep but it got infected. Infection means that the bad germs got into it. Infection's the most dangerous thing there is, Tom. Infection was what made the superflu germ kill all the people. And infection is what made people want to make the germ in the first place. An infection of the mind.

It's dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters.