Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech; it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.

In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories

The expert magician seeks to deceive the mind, rather than the eye.

The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting. . . . Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.

Our instinct as human beings is to provide answers, to ease tension. As writers our job is the opposite, to create tension and not dispel it immediately.

A lawyer's job is to manipulate the skeletons in other people's closets.

A reader's emotions can be sparked with few words. That's the power of dialogue.

To create tension, dialogue needs to be stretched out. That is, characters should not be immediately responsive.

Dialogue is a lean language in which every word counts.

A writer writes what other people only think.

Most of the time, tough, combative, adversarial dialogue is much more exciting than physical action.

Reading aloud means no skipping, no skimming, no cutting to the chase.

If a man admires a woman he had something in his mind that he would like to carry further. If a woman admires a man, she had definitely made up her mind.

I'm concerned with protecting the legal system.

. . . We love fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing

No commandment surpasses the one concerning the liberation of hostages, for they are among the starving, the thirsting, the stripped, always in danger of death.

It is to the press mankind are indebted for having dispelled the clouds which so long encompassed religion, for disclosing her genuine lustre, and disseminating her salutary doctrines.

Come with me into the woods where spring is advancing, as it does, no matter what, not being singular or particular, but one of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.

Defeat doesn't finish a man, quit does.

It was a pleasure, Enna, Finn, tree rat." "Did she just call you tree rat?

O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.