I have learned to do more with less, so you don't see the big books anymore.

I might add that you change as a person as you grow older, so you change as a writer, too.

I remember one winter, when I was about five or six, I spent three days with another boy, tracking a bobcat that had been sighted in another county fifty miles away, but which I was sure had come into our neighborhood.

I would also argue that there is a good chance that an outline will help you stave off any onslaught of writer's block. Let me advise you right up front that I am not a big believer in writer's block. I think writer's block is God's way of telling you one of two things - that you failed to think your material through sufficiently before you started writing, or that you need a day or two off with your family and friends.

Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.

The reader wants to see something happen between pages one and four hundred, and nothing happens if the characters don't change.

I think I make better use of language and imagery than when I started out.