I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private - a comforting thought.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

In America you make your plans and then they happen.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

I think, in general, it's better not to respond to reviews of your work.

I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.

If somebody says your story is only published because you look nice in the photo, that maybe spurs you on to write.

A stink. A stench. A foulness in her mind, dreadful and unforgiving. A compost of horrible ideas and rotted thoughts that made her want to take our her brain and wash it.

Don't feel so small and condemn yourself. You are the universe, so love and compliment yourself.

Hell of a thing to have to experience, hell of a thing to have to see, to be reminded you're a human being and all it meant to be one.

We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory.

It's not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It's their intimate relationship with it.

Organizations need to undergo fundamental changes, both in order to adapt to the new business environment and to become ecologically sustainable.

So one thing I want to say about life is don't be scared and don't hang back, and most of all, don't waste it.

Institutions which have too much security ... tend to become bureaucratic. They add layers of people and layers of rules in order to assure the security of not making mistakes.

Alan Rickman, who was mentored me a lot. He was very keen to offer his opinions on stuff. Not in a pretentious way. Not in a patronizing way.

Man loves because he is Love. He seeks Joy, for he is Joy. He thirsts for God for he is composed of God and he cannot exist without Him.