I don't think there is such a thing as pure imagination. I think it's a combination of memory and invention.

Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.

Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life.

Art is so personal. I'm very comforted by the fact that certain movies that I love, other people hate. Certain books that I love, other people hate. You can't please everybody.

To have too much time is not good, you have to force yourself. And human beings aren't meant for true freedom. I've learned that, having had it.

Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

I think fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition.

I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much...people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov.

You're never so alive as after you thought you were going to die.

In the storm-lit darkness, the beaded sweat and raindrops on her arm were like so many glittering stars, and her skin was like a span of night sky.

Josie, like Gretchen, isn't afraid of blood. What woman would be?

A beautiful sidenote is, once the toxins and dramas are removed, you purify your life. Simplify and purify. What better way to live your life? Simple and pure!

I think women need kindness more than love. When one human being is kind to another, it's a very deep matter.

There are two things that you have to lie to get through. One is politics, and the other is marriage.

My number one thing to work on is not being reactive - but appropriateness doesn't come easily to me sometimes.

After the feet of beauty fly my own.

A man's only as old as the woman he feels.

Have you read your Bible or has the Bible read you?

In a sick world even the hale are sick.