Steven Amsterdam Quotes

Fiction demands structures and recognizable shapes. Big surprises only draw attention to the writer's hand.

The better we are at accepting the limits of our world, the more easily we can embrace what we have.

Being with a small publisher has been huge. They bat for me for everything.

I could imagine that a character could do almost anything at any time, and that was the freedom of the whole thing. But keeping track of what was plausible for certain characters [was the challenge].

A story is built on characters and reasons.

I'm never going to write a whole paragraph describing what a living room looks like.

I used to do jacket design, and I'm very conscious of covers, and probably meddle more than other authors would.