Religious reverence for one's own job, even if the job is worth doing, is a sexual turnoff.

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.

What characters do must grow out of who they are, and who they are is, in turn, influenced by what you make happen to them.

Characterization is not divorced from plot, not a coat of paint you slap on after the structure of events is already built. Rather characterization is inseparable from plot.

There are two wrong reactions to a rejection slip: deciding it's a final judgment on your story and/or talent, and deciding it's no judgment on your story and/or talent.

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is

You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

Technology is Darwinian. It spreads. It evolves. It adapts. The most dangerous wipes out the less fit.

Conflict is the place where character and plot intersect.

In matters of love: When giving, be generous! When taking, be thankful!

It's just funny that anybody would care at all to take apart the words that I write. It's kind of cool!

I wanted to cut down on the profanity, because I think I'm funnier without sayin' a lot of cuss words.

We earnestly recommend young men to read what has been to ourselves a truly delightful work.

Astrology is like any other branch of knowledge. It can be used for good or for ill, properly or improperly, by skilled and unskilled practitioners alike.

I don't think we can ever learn much from ultra-sensitive, shifty faces, skilled in disguise, that hide themselves in lust, as beasts hide to die.

'Spice Girls' is about unifying the world - every age, every gender, everyone. It's woman power, it's an essence, a tribe.

The avant-garde is now stranded in the past.

It's hard to remain patient when it seems so debilitating to do so. The balance comes with staying ambitious while being patient.

Everybody needs a seashell in her bathroom to remind her the ocean is her home.