Potential audiences are real people found in real places.

What cruel creatures men are. Our bodies tell us to love so many, but there's room in our hearts for so few.

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people.

When you're 16, 30 seems ancient. When you're 30, 45 seems ancient. When you're 45, 60 seems ancient. When you're 60, nothing seems ancient.

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size.

Cynicism has all the smart words on it's side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary.

You can call it institutionalized racism or institutionalized inequality, but what I say is that any system that operates to maintain inequality is a corrupt system and must be addressed.

When I stepped from hard manual work to writing, I just stepped from one kind of hard work to another.

By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.

We build our character from the bricks of habit we pile up day by day.