You count snouts,” Straha said. “Whichever side can persuade most snouts to join it prevails. It does not have to be clever. It does not have to be wise. It only needs to be popular.

...Do you see things in black and white, or are there shades of gray for you?" "I hope there's gray...Black and white make things easier, but only if you don't want to think.

Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

A horsefly can't do a horse much real damage, but it can drive it wild anyhow.

You can write better about a place you've seen for yourself. You don't have to have been there - I've sure written about places I've never seen - but it does help.

Many things are possible. Few things are certain.

I learned by reading an awful lot and by writing a half a million words of stuff nobody would do anything with except wrap old fish.

I'm a social caterpillar. I am not a social butterfly

I do first draft in longhand, which saves a lot of rewriting. I try to get a certain amount done each day. Don't always, but I try. Then I clean up in the rewrites.

People you don't like are pigheaded. Your friends are stubborn, or hold to their purpose.

People were as they were, not not as he wished them to be.

I reached out and placed my hand on the book and thought maybe someday I wouldn't need the bruises or the scars anymore. Maybe someday it would be all right for the scars to go away.

Why, yes. I am a strange wonder. The most special of snowflakes! Born out of time, forever running to catch up to it!

The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do.

I'm giving into my tendency to want to blur and blend the lines between art and life, and privacy and sharing.

I always try to honor a character by being honest and truthful to who they are, in spite of my own personality and beliefs.

I do love the prose poem because it's such a perverse and provocative little box - always asking to be questioned, never giving a straight or definitive answer.

Music is my passion - it's what I love and it's in my blood. You can never take me away from my work.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

To help people with the struggle, I have to reveal my own struggles.

Moving on is easy what your leaving behind is what makes it hard.