I'm a really anxious person, so I tend not to keep secrets. I tend not to even want to hear them. It's too nerve-wracking for me to try and keep things from people.

In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.

Structure is translation software for your imagination.

Every hour you spend writing is an hour you don't spend worrying about your writing.

Status, worry and comparison are ways to madness, not victory.

Superb historical romance, with a spiritual theme woven seamlessly throughout. I much enjoyed The Covered Deep and look forward to more from its author!

Think of it as the Doorway of No Return. The feeling must be that your lead character, once she passes through, cannot go home again until the major problem of the plot is solved.

Write like you're in love. Edit like you're in charge.

A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters. You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.

There's a perilous word fiction writers need to watch out for. The word is 'had.'

The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It's a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.

I am not in the entertainment business. I don't give a damn if it was spectacular or not. I want cause and effect.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

I always wanted to play a lawyer.

When I went to work in a studio, I took my pride and made a nice little ball of it and threw it right out the window.

The secret of forgiveness is not to procrastinate, but to free yourself immediately of stress by totally forgiving this instant.

It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.

It's good to take a longer view and think, what would I really like to do if I had no limitations whatsoever?

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen.

Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality.