Evil is just sort of ultimately boring. The good thing is just complicated. It's more provocative to me and more stimulating to me.

I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won't work. Just wait, it will come.

All important things are hard.

Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the characters I'm writing about, something happens that they move from wherever they are in the beginning to knowledge or wisdom, they know something they never would have acknowledged or realized if it hadn't been for my book - that for me is what literature does.

I am a moralist. I worry.

Being able to laugh got me through.