You have to be able to play: this is spontaneous interaction, and it flexes all the creative muscles you need as a writer. And empathy is one of those muscles.

I don't think virtue has a downside. I think human nature does.

When you write, you're supposed to go stand somewhere else for a while, see things from a perspective that's not in line with your own reflexive truths.

I've always hated quotation marks: they're ugly on the page and they classify the text for you, putting dialogue in one box and narration in another.

I have to trick myself into writing a story - impose some arbitrary constraint to distract me from the constraints of my past habits or my fear that I don't have much to say.

I think it's very hard to be sexually explicit and erotic - though there are writers, like K. M. Soehnlein, who are just brilliant at this.

If you cross-section anyone's life from one angle and then another, what constitutes goodness looks different each time. It's not an absolute.

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.

You're building a tool, not a piece of art. Don't be blinded by the vision.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

In reality, I don't see myself as a man hunter. In fact, when it comes to love, I am rarely the one to make the first move.

War is the highest form of modern art.

Modesty is silent when it would be improper to speak; the humble, without being called upon, never recollects to say anything of himself.

It came to my house. It sat on my shoulders. Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours. I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.

I haven't stopped and I don't plan on stoppin' any time soon.

The great thing about faith in God is that it keeps a man undisturbed in the midst of disturbance.