I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.

you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

To write is human, to edit is divine.

You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.

A writer will divine a metaphor from a pattern on a dress, or a gesture, because sunsets have been done before.

Polly had a gift for baking pies, and she poured her heart and soul into every one she made.

But we have reason to think that the annihilation of work is no less a physical impossibility than its creation, that is, than perpetual motion.

It's rare to have a best friend who is also your brother and also an NFL football player, and he knows exactly what I'm talking about.

(James) Anderson has a gift from the gods: he could swing an orange.

I gambled at the crap table all night and finally lost $8, but during that time the house gave me four drinks and two cigars, so it was still a lot cheaper than renting a room.

I think of Terrence Malick's movie Days of Heaven - one of Richard Gere's first movies - you can push pause on almost any image in the movie and it looks like a painting.

Blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives.

We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.