Cousin, the days of gods and heroes are over." "Not to me. Not to them.

You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

Is there a spiritual element to creativity? Hell, yes. Our mightiest ally (our indispensable ally) is belief in something we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or feel.

We're wrong if we think we're the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.

The last element in drama is high stakes. War, of course, is life and death - survival, not only for the story's characters, but often for the society itself. That's why I'm drawn to stories that are built around wars, even if they're not technically "war stories."

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.

The hero wanders, the hero suffers, the hero returns. You are that hero.