Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!

...what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.

Let life be the foundation. Be brave. Wander deep inside yourself to the little room no one knows about. Fling the door wide open and write.

I know it's difficult in the beginning. But, listen. If you have the impulse to write, do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, and write.

You are not an "author," you are a writer. If your books are still selling like hotcakes ten years after your demise, THEN you're an author.

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline.... But also every single day a kid needs a break.

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.

...at seventeen I tried to write poetry confining myself solely to Anglo-Saxon words - don't know if it helped, but it made me more concrete ...

Good or bad, words have an impact on each of us. As a writer, I can only hope that the effects my words have on others are more often good than bad.

As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.

I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.

If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters.

People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.

Remember, it’s called ‘character development’ for a reason – it takes time, patience and understanding to build a fictional person.

... And the only way to find that honesty is to not overthink it.For your writing to come alive--to be multi-dimensional--you must barter away some control.