I can only write one novel at a time. The author of the Perry Mason novels, Erle Stanley Gardner, often worked on four novels simultaneously, and produced a million words a year. I'm envious.

I need time to develop the idea into a plot before I talk about it.

None of great sages of China preached the precept of love as a guideline for human behavior.

My experience is that an original and compelling idea for a novel is a rare thing.

I've never discovered the idea for my next novel while I was still working on the current novel. Other writers don't suffer this.

I researched fiction writing for months before I taught my first class, much of it looking for strong techniques from bestselling authors.

My students - all adults - bring a lot of writing skill to the first class, and they and I get better as the class progresses.

All love is socioeconomic. It’s the gradients in status that make arousal possible.

The biggest threat to authors in this age is not plagiarism or poverty, it's obscurity

Time is a wealth of change but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

I lived in Dallas, and it's a big city, but you can jump on any freeway and drive in any direction for about 30 minutes and you are in the country - open space, wide open, very open, nothin' around.

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

I believe, in my better moments, that there is a plan and things go not the way we want them to but the way they should.

On the Firehole I caught thirty-six inches worth of trout - in six installments.

Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing.

I just want to feel as much as I can, it's what soul is all about.

We are the only animals who steal and drink the milk from other species.