There is no sound so terrible as a man's sorrow for his own death.

Writing is not about making a buck, not about publishers and agents. Writing is not about feeling good. Writing is about pain, suffering, hard work, risk, and fear.

People talk about dysfunctional families; I've never seen any other kind.

What could smell better than supper being cooked by someone else?

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

The beauty of word processing, God bless my word processor, is that it keeps the plotting very fluid. The prose becomes like a liquid that you can manipulate at will. In the old days, when I typed, every piece of typing paper was like cast in concrete.