Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.

You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle.

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.

We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

What we fear we often rage against.

Their silence comfortable. Something unfolding. But what? Not love, which wrenched and wounded. Not love, which came only once.

Most women are one man away from welfare.

There are times where excessive innocence seems so monstrous that it becomes hateful.

Faith is building on what you know is here so you can reach what you know is there.

I look at my roommates who are so proud of me that it makes me proud.

And this lies in the nature of things: What people are potentially is revealed in actuality by what they produce.

Don't ask a man what is important to him. Watch how he spends his time

All that is necessary to raise imbecility into what the mob regards as profundity is to lift it off the floor and put it on a platform.

Don't hope for a life without problems. An easy life results in a judgmental and lazy mind.

The noblest service comes from nameless hands; and the best servant does his work unseen.

It's very important to always put things in their historical contexts. It teaches important lessons about the country in question.