Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.

If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author's views rather than about the character's.

I wasn't sure I could make it through another hour of his company without throwing my stapler at his head.

Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.

When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears.

Sarte was right, Hell is other people

I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better - Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos - so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms.