I enjoy writing fiction more than writing anything else. Wouldn’t anyone?

Fiction though it is a fiction, should be written in a way that it feels like a reality, a reality every reader willingly or sometimes unwillingly goes through, until the reader finishes reading and sometimes...

Some books must be sipped slowly like a strong bourbon. Most books must be devoured more than once because as you age you distill more.

Then he was there, turned half toward her with a guarded expression etched across his face. She didn’t stop or even slow her step. When she reached him, she grabbed the front of his shirt...

When the gap between the world of the city and the world my grandfather had presented to me as right and good became too wide and depressing to tolerate, I’d turn to my other great...

Life is about trusting your feelings and taking chances, losing and finding happiness, appreciating the memories, learning from the past, and realizing people change.

Writing is just building a new world – one character, one place, one maniac at a time.

Hey, I write fiction. I just make this stuff up, unless I get my hands on some good juicy truth. You know the kind I’m talking about … that stranger-than variety.

Philippe to his mother “do stop chasing after a carriage that has a runaway mare.

Grandpa said that we could solve a lot of the world’s problems if we considered cats and dogs edible. Like the neighbor’s dog who goes to the bathroom in his flower garden. And know what...

Before the autumn of our years, there exists a time when we struggle to reconcile what we are with what we wish to be. This time can be known as summer. After spring gives us...

Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the...

…and I wondered, not for the first time, if some of life’s tragedy arose when people put themselves in situations they were not by nature suited for.

If you focus your eyes towards the horizon, everything and everyone walking in front of you becomes a blurry mass. That’s what everyone else became. All of their dark wool suits began to mesh into...

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s...

If we truly detach from our childhood and abandon our inherent romanticism, then we shred any bit of humanity left in us.

Once out of the mailroom, I began to learn more about fear. As soonas fear begins to ascend, anatomically, from the pit of the stomach to thethroat and brain, from fear of violence to the...

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

In 1936, I first wrote science fiction. It was a long-winded attempt at writing an endless novel…which died. I remember one sentence, “Whole forests stood sere and brown in midsummer”.

How does evil arise? Where does it come from? We think of malevolent men-— murderers, rapists, tyrants—and somehow believe they are different creatures from us. They are not. All evil men were once innocent babes,...

A romance book is designed to tell you something about love–its ability to endure, forgive, go the extra mile, care about someone, put someone else first.

I could have drowned…and my brother didn’t even care.

My name’s Sean, Jem. I’m Sean.

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of...

Going for it and changing what you could change-that’s what success was all about.

I liked reading biographies of writers, even if (as was the case with Monsieur Rabelais)I’d never read any of their actual writing. I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote (“NEVER USE A...

It was a time before Facebook and Instagram and texting. I imagine it must be easier now, for college students. Home must not feel so far away anymore. But how do you cut the apron...

Six nervous wives at the sink, each quiet as a queen on a chessboard.

I was so enthused with literature — not stuck on literature, but in love with letters — that I was easily inclined to bring all the conversations round to works I had read or fictitious...

Kadang aku merasa jatuh cinta kepadanya seperti bernapas—terlalu mudah. Sangat mudah sampai-sampai aku tidak menyadarinya.

A time will come in your life, William, where your faith will be tested… and you must stay faithful to the word and vision that the All-Father has given to you.

We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world, populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity–governing and inspiring themselves with all the lucidity wit which we rendered them.

Books do pretend …but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It’s technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day–a way of relating.

I tapped around on my new Miracle Phone—a gift from Joseph—as I listened to the discussion about our next move. I wasn’t trying to be rude, but I’d recently become addicted to this one game...

There’s something in there,” Matt said. “Something alive. It punched me.””Punched you?” Baldwin’s face screwed up. “Are you sure a bat didn’t fly into you? I bet there are a few in there.”Matt rubbed his...

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.

Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit...

What do you insolent merfolks want with me now? I swear I haven’t eaten any of your children.”-Ursula

Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real...

An exceptional woman with all the desired qualities exists only in a man’s imagination.

Because beautiful things never last. Not roses nor snow… And not fireworks, either

How you spend your time when you are not working or studying says everything about who you are and what is motivating your life.

The black bird cocked its head to one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, ‘You shadow man.”I’m Shadow,’ said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawn’s rump, raised its...

Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.

Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it...

Come on, it’s an American tradition. Apple soup? Mom’s homemade chicken pie?’ She chuckled in spite of herself, then winced. ‘It’s apple pie and Mom’s homemade chicken soup. But you didn’t do badly, for a...

If you find that you’re going through hell, keep moving. You will get to the end eventually.

He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a featherhat, walking on his hind legs.

Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed” (p. 381).