During the Japanese invasion, bombs had fallen from the sky and people could run for cover. Now, they exploded in the middle of the road, or in the fields while people were playing soccer.

Sometimes what we don’t want is actually what we need.

Wine is bottled poetry

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a...

It hurt, remembering. Hurt because there was so much I’d done, so much I’d yet to do. In so many different ways, I now realized, not remembering had been a blessing. A brief respite in...

So…Mason, Eddie, and Mia went to Spokane to hunt Strigoi?””Yes.””Holy shit. Why didn’t you go with them? Seems like something you’d do.”I resisted the urge to smack him. “Because I’m not insane! But I’m going...

L shot Maki a disappointed look. But soon he forgot everything when Misa Amane appeared onstage. Enraptured he began to cheer with the girls in black lace and frilly skirts.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.”Goethe

For me, stories are like WD-40 for the brain: they keep all the wheels and gears and clicky-things running smoothly. Without them, cognitive function becomes a bore.

My new story collection won’t please everyone, nor was it meant to. Then again, not everybody lives in my world. If they did, I’d have to move out and find another world to write about.

Being an author, writing a book was great fun. Publishing and marketing, not so fun.

Pastor McFucking Bride this . . . Pastor McFucking Bride that. Fuck him!

It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut—it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.

Thanks to Dashiell Hammett. “He was thin, walked with a stick, and was the only private dick I knew who used the pockets of his sport coat. Maybe that means something, maybe not.” Ramone Ramone,...

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

It was only much later that he was made flesh and blood [in the Gospels] on paper. Thus Christ was created as a literary creation.

I wasn’t sure what was worse: being oblivious or living within reality. (Eric)

My whore of a brother has done it again.” “Then, as always, orders me to clean up the mess.” “I think I hate him.” Poseidon to his brother, Zeus.

If a woman chooses to support her husband and become First Lady, I believe she must do so with the understanding that the public expects the full-meal deal.

All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction.

That’s the fashion. Fast as the speed of light, they say. Ha! It’s got no soul, sir, no heart.

Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear;...

Despite what you think you know, most people don’t want to fight, especially when evenly matched. … That’s why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of “don’t hold me back” while desperately...

Iranian fiction has entered a new era…The Islamic Revolution has shaken all values and norms within society. Now, the images of women have to be rethought and redefined. Under extreme pressure, women must look at...

Misunderstandings arise only in undefined relationships

It’s not an easy thing to tell a true story.

The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.

I’m going to leave your ass out here in the dark with no way to get home. And one of your legs is missing.

No girl can forget the day she lost her virginity, or the circumstance that led to it

If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and...

Tell me a story,’ demanded Fireflyer.’Why? Do you eat them, too, then?”Only the ohs and ayes and ees and oos. The Kays are too spikey and the zeds are too buzzzy and the ones with...

He thought, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while the artist-created images remained unchangeably the same. He thought that the fear of death was perhaps the root of all art,...

While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always...

In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there....

Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and...

No, it’s not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. It won’t...

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers — namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say,...

Gordon Edgley’s sudden death came as a shock to everyone – not least himself. One moment he was in his study, seven words into the twenty-fifth sentence of the final chapter of his new book,...

NOTHING IS GREATER THAN ITS SOURCE

I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

It never occurs to one to think whether she is pretty or ugly. One just surrenders to her charm.

While I stood on the front porch, watching him climb into his vehicle, I breathed in the humid air. I looked at the cloudless sky, and the blue vastness of it made me think about...

I knew that it was impossible for us to be kept apart for too long.

He felt as though the bones of his ribcage were snapping beneath the weight of the stone that God had laid over his heart.

It was the sunlight coming through the window that woke Alex up; mother nature’s own alarm clock rudely snapped him back to consciousness. The white light poured in so arrogantly that it was too much...

I don’t read other science fiction. I don’t read any at all.

Be who you were meant to be and not what you’ve allowed yourself to become,” Kate said to Mavis as she wavered over following her dream. from ‘Lifesong

That was when I saw their hate come out. They fought on the front lawn. Balloons and my birthday cake stood witness as I watched every regretful blow from my mother. I knew my sister...

He who writes books that aim to convince is a comedian, too, just a comedian. What has he got to offer others, apart from chains, still more chains? Fiction never liberated anyone. No one ever...

The first thing you lose when you die is your motor skills.