The worst situations in the world always start with the words, 'trust me.'

Like Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake and Robert B. Parker and oh so many others, I want to die with my boots on, facedown on my keyboard if possible, in the middle of a sentence.

Perhaps true faith is a form of insanity.

The only way to build a fan base is to have a lot of material out there for readers to find. You can't manufacture a fan base. You create it, one story at a time.

I am one of the heretics who believes that art must be enjoyed first and analyzed later.

Our subconscious works in metaphors, stories, and word play. That's why a particular story or movie may mean more to some people than to others. Have you considered why you quest for this tale now?

Write. Publish. Repeat.

[Discipline i]t’s the ability to overcome the urge to grab the bright and shiny and interesting to finish what you’ve started.

Man's capacity to innovate should not exceed his ability to live in peace.

the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts of science.

The bad times I can handle. It's the good times that drive me crazy. When is the other shoe going going to drop?

Let it (what you have written) be kept back until the ninth year. [Lat., Nonumque prematur in annum.]

You can't have an industrial revolution, you can't have democracies, you can't have populations who can govern themselves until you have literacy. The printing press simply unlocked literacy.

If you're comfortable with someone, you feel creatively free. Whether it's a comedic scene or a dramatic one, you don't feel self-conscious because you feel safe with the people that you're around.

The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery.

The thing that I have done throughout my life is to do the best job that I can and to be me.

You can't go out and practice average on Wednesday, average on Thursday, okay on Friday and then expect to play well on Sunday.

A theme of digital success is keeping it simple.