You cannot write your character until you know how he or she thinks, until you know what their philosophy is in the world that they occupy.

It's my belief that people enter your life at exactly the right time.

But people in a small town tend to do a lot of talking, even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Nothing says work efficiency like panic mode.

The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement.

A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.

Any conversation including the mention of Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, or Emily Dickinson is one worth getting into or at least eavesdropping.

Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.

A writer always writes.

Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible.

If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals.

Every characteristic absence of spirituality, every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus - you have to react, you follow every impulse.

What can you do for love?Can you leave a person for love?Can you leave a country for love?I think I wouldn't even leave my couch for love

To the goggling unbeliever Texans say, as people always say about their mangier dishes, 'But it's just like chicken, only tenderer.' Rattlesnake is, in fact, just like chicken - only tougher.

I wonder more and more just where I may have come out if I had never seen Harvard Square.

If both parties have a stake in the other, the chances of them killing each other are going to be reduced.

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.

The only way I can be there and really get into the character is if I'm her.

Mitchell claimed that her materialist view leads to “humbleness.” But it is not humbling; it is dehumanizing. It essentially reduces humans to robots.

Growing up with two sisters, you either play by yourself or play Barbie with them. I played by myself.

A library should be like a pair of open arms.