It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and...

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...

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.

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.