She knew with suddeness and ease that this moment would be with her always, within hand's reach of memory. She doubted if they all sensed it - they had seen the world - but even George was silent for a minute as they looked, and the scene, the smell, even the sound of the band playing a faintly recognisable movie theme, was locked forever in her, and she was at peace.

Sometimes dead is better

Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.

The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.