When you're writing a story, you're creating something of an artificial ending.

My ambition was to live like music.

Of course there’s something there; unfortunately, there’s always something ‘there.’ Something you will one day be sorry you saw.

The only way to know whats possible is to venture past impossible.

You can teach people a lot about craft and various techniques, and you can certainly teach them to appreciate, but you cannot give them spirit or soul if it's not there.

What are you thinking?” She asks. -That you are beautiful. That not everyone could see it. I almost became the kind of person who could not.

Whenever young writers ask me for advice, I always say you have to be able to take a lot of rejection because, unless you're very lucky, that's what's going to happen.

The art of integrating the ego and the impulse for empathy in a dynamic call and response.

I think people hold back all kinds of things. And in a way, they just want to be nice. They want to be civil.

I know several women my age who are really poor...because they spent most of their energy taking care of children.

Partly, I'm worried that no one is saying anything because they are afraid of being seen as politically correct.

It's a fact that people are afraid of what they don't understand. And most are too lazy or ignorant to find out more.

When I meet people, I no longer say "Hi, I'm Derek Landy, pleased to meet you." Now I say "Hi, I'm number one bestselling author Derek Landy. Worship me.

Everything gets better with the touch of love.

The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space.

Childhood has no necessary connection with age.

You live on Earth only for a few short years which you call an incarnation, and then you leave your body as an outworn dress and go for refreshment to your true home in the spirit.

What fortune teller would ever have had the nerve to predict that the best years of my life would turn out to be my old age?

If there are amazing graces on this earth, I believe that they are these good children sent to us by God and not yet soiled by the knowledge that their nation does not love them.

It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.

There are and always will be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven!