Patience is not a virtue. It is an achievement.

Luck is not as random as you think. Before that lottery ticket won the jackpot, someone had to buy it.

At some point, sitting in the school library, during reading period, I looked up from my leopard print hardcover composition notebook where I was scribbling a derivative [John Ronald Reuel ] Tolkien epic full of purple prose in tiny handwriting and thought to myself, "Damn! I am a writer! How did that happen?".

Being smart as a whip includes knowing when not to crack it.

Here is where I like to burst in as a writer, to take one strong sensory detail or image and instead of enhancing it or directing attention to it by shouting about it, I simply take it away.

Marion Zimmer Bradley took apart my first submission to her, covered the manuscript in red ink revisions, and told me to try her again. I had never been so reeling with authorial joy as I had been that day, holding Marion's letter and seeing that ravaged manuscript - finally, it meant that someone cared!

The pyramid shape is said to hold many secrets and amazing properties. One of them is a sense of wonder.