Being comfortable isn't the way to learn to expand your abilities.

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.

I do try not to spend much time reading in the suspense genre.

I don't have dry seasons, because I don't allow them.

I had been writing fiction since I was in eighth grade, because I loved it.

If I don't have a project going, I sit down and begin to write something - a character sketch, a monologue, a description of some sight, or even just a list of ideas.

Yes, in my books I do edit myself to keep from becoming the Village Explainer.

Much of what we do in life has a huge component of luck.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea - something I've figured out about her that's news and that's worth a reader's time.

It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.

Contrary to what many writers imply about the process, nobody forces a writer to sell his work to the film industry.

Healing restores to wholeness that which has been injured or fragmented.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

You should be able to quit ten things you're good at to master one thing you're best at.

The garden is as good a symbol as you can find of a dialectic between spheres of experience - of culture and nature - that presuppose one another.

I am just convinced that people want to see people on TV who are more like themselves.

In the network's mind there are no limits.

What's the difference between a liberal and a conservative? A liberal will interpret the constitution, a conservative will quote it!

We need to give credence to the nonsexual relationships...the idea of having significant others instead of a significant other.

Poetics is a science for stammering poets.

I like to hear what other people's interpretations are, because people come up with things I'd never thought about.