Structure is translation software for your imagination.

In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.

Every hour you spend writing is an hour you don't spend worrying about your writing.

Status, worry and comparison are ways to madness, not victory.

Superb historical romance, with a spiritual theme woven seamlessly throughout. I much enjoyed The Covered Deep and look forward to more from its author!

Think of it as the Doorway of No Return. The feeling must be that your lead character, once she passes through, cannot go home again until the major problem of the plot is solved.

Write like you're in love. Edit like you're in charge.

A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters. You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.

There's a perilous word fiction writers need to watch out for. The word is 'had.'

The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It's a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.

The thing I do at the beginning is a "voice journal," a free form doc that is the character speaking to me. I just work on it until I start to hear different from my own, or the other characters.

Annie Taliaferro had that hammerhead look about her, like a breachy range cow, or a bunch-quitting steer.

I'm worried about parents who aren't parenting.

All I'm out for is a good time - all the rest is propaganda.

The cost of a thing is what I call life which has to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

We must love, as looking one day to hate.

What bliss will fill the ransomed souls, when they in glory dwell, to see the sinner as he rolls, in quenchless flames of hell.

Compassionate conservative. I don't know what that is, it sounds like a Volvo with a gun rack.

We have believed for many years, much earlier than anyone else was talking about this issue, that it was in the interest of China to evolve to a more flexible exchange rate system.

I've never really considered myself as being the best bodybuilder. I always try to let the people decide that. I just try to do the best I can do at whatever it is that I'm doing.

I belong to no organized political body. I am a Democrat.