What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else.

Courage is being the only only one who knows how terrified you are.

Suspense is achieved by information control: What you know. What the reader knows. What the characters know.

Keep at it! The one talent that's indispensable to a writer is persistence. You must write the book, else there is no book. It will not finish itself. Do not try to commit art. Just tell the damned story.

I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad?

I understand why we do that now. It’s a help, not a threat. It’s something to remind you how important words are. Ideas are important. Principles are important. Words are important. Your word is the most important of all. Your word is who you are.

Of all human lamentations, without doubt, the most common is if only I had known. But we can't know, and so days of death and fire so often begin no differently than those of love and warmth.