If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

It's only a little secret, but having a secret makes me feel better. Like a human being again.

I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read

There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.

The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to the movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands... and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.

The writer's original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader's.

Kill if you will, but command me nothing!