“When reading a book, one hopes it doesnt turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do ...”

“Ive had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.”

“When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sams cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.”

“Split your skulla hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrumenta scalpel, perhapsand make a hand-sized slit; it doesnt matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very...”

“This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shutswallows me up like so ...”

“I have a bad habit of dropping verbal pellets to get a reaction, like Ursula LeGuins A novelists business is lying (that particular one got a lot of attention on Facebook), or, Why is it that Chris...”

“Is there magic in this world? Certainly! But it is not the kind of magic written about in fantasy stories. It is the kind of magic that comes from ideas and the hard work it often takes to make the...”

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”

“A culture of unaccountability is a culture without incentive, and a culture without incentive is the death of critical and creative thinking.”

“I read a book, am vortexed in with no escape; my face contorts, eyelids frost, breath comes short, body longs, heart stop-starts. Whos to say too much wont kill me? Whos to say I care?”

“Writing is a beast to tame, an energy to transform. Whip that toad into a prince and French kiss it to life. We start at the top but keep looking down, from macro to micro, from what could work to ...”

“Writing makes me hard, like a fisherman, and brown from the heat. Tossing out and reeling in is a job for visionaries and those with calloused hands.”