People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

No matter what, if you have the strength of life, it is enough to be thankful.

It's fun telling you tall Texas tales. You always look like a little girl who's hearing Cinderella for the first time.

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth and they never believe me.

Confidence isn't something you prove to people, it's something that comes off from who you are and how you represent yourself.

Human existence basically is──a never to be completed imperfect tense.

Storytelling is my passion, and it rises from a love of reading.

I don't think young people need to see the face of the deceased.

Well, I am not really a conventional mom at all. Like, I had my kids really young. I had Danny when I was 18 or 19 and then Liam when I was 23 and Molly, I had when I was a little older.

Into the ocean went a world more fantastic than any imagination could inspire.

The form is always integral to the expression of the theme or to the sheer telling of the story, and sometimes the right form is apparent to me from the outset and sometimes it isn't.