Those of us who believe in princesses are often laughed at. But I believe the world needs princesses and dukes and queens and kings. We need people who glitter and shine and make a room...

If it ran, a Bean would shoot it. If it fell, a Bean would eat it.

I don’t watch reality TV, my reality is tough enough.

They stared into the distance as though they were being absorbed into an alternate space-time reality. Perhaps they were. But probably they already had been.

More than likely you’ll do well enough alone by the engines of your own fate until you either hit a few really nasty bumps in the road or grow old enough to realize that there...

How did I end up in this situation? I’m the district sales manager of a napkin factor. Why is my daughter in space?

Yeah, it’s just me and my trash can here,” as I patted its lid and started pushing it up the driveway.

The only wand you’ll ever need is a better-feeling thought.

Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows’ necks.’ – Senor Sempere.

Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable...

One word came to mind: pee-yew. Evan tried to place the odor; it wasn’t a heap of decayed garbage or that of a spoiled fish. Truth be told, he smelled like rotten cheese.

He pressed bravely ahead with his story, the outlines and preliminary versions of which by now filled two thick notebooks, reorganizing, redrafting, and obsessively re-polishing lines and paragraphs with a jeweler’s precision.But it was not...

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn’t matter what they do, because everything...

So you’re going to have to ask yourselves on simple question: Which one of us is speaking now?

We’re going to need a shitload of steel,” the human muttered.

Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn’t enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the...

The dominoes of fate are falling down as we are speaking, and Ferriar knows what will happen when the last one crashes down.

Yo, I’m in position. Ready when you is.”Gareth cringed while crossing the wide concourse, checking both directions. The giant hallway was the main drag of a ghost town, its only residents a solitary custodian sweeping...

Literature is a virus.

Writing a novel is agony.

I had a dream about you. I thought together we could change the world, but you said you’d rather change the TV channel. But you were all talk, because you never even did that. So...

The entertainment medium of film is particularly tuned to the present imaginations of people at large. A lot of fiction is intensely nostalgic.

Hard to hear, hard to understand, and hard to work with.

Why not?

It was as if-this is something I thought of only later, of course-she was gently peeling bcd one layer after another hat covered a person’s heart, a very sensual feeling.

But you have such dimples,” said Anne, smiling affectionately into the pretty, vivacious face so near her own. “Lovely dimples, like little dents in cream. I have given up all hope of dimples. My dimple-dream...

I didn’t write any fiction until I was past thirty.

When you walk,go different roads that take you nowhere,and see your world.

I’ve become remarkably good at blocking impossibly bizarre happenings from my consciousness. Denial can be a beautiful thing.

Dear family,I am drafting a new laundry protocol for better and more considerate usage of the washing machine

Funny how much we all suffer trying to spare others a bit of pain.

My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author’s story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from...

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.

You look like the vamp who bled the cat.

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors–we hope–of your life come from reading fiction.

How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind [pseudoscience/’woo’], for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education...

Most stories are not about peoplebut about life, an addiction like the rest of themthat destroys you even as you love it,but you love it anyway and can never get enough.