You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

To write is human, to edit is divine.

You don't belong to someone who considers you as an option!

Treat your past as a book that you learn from instead of a hammer that you beat yourself up about.

The Lord created you and me for the purpose of becoming Gods like himself.

You're trying to just leave the world a little better.

I think people want to feel stuff right now.

Clothing sales plummet, rent delinquencies mount and even grocery sales shrink as gamblers, having tapped out their entertainment budgets, dip into dollars set aside for necessities

Basically, editing is done in rehearsal and in the writing process and in the acting, so it's very, very tricky, very, very tricky.

The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.

Occasionally, the book tells stories that would likely grate on senior management – but that is what free speech is all about.

I ain't Mary, so ain't a damn thing Poppin'.