“Becoming a writer is a polite way of saying you've chosen alcoholism as a career.”

“Commercial fiction writing – where my bread is buttered – is fairly straightforward. The writing is simply efficiency and story. The more you have of one the less you need of the other.”

“Being a writer all boils down to this: It's you, in a chair, staring at a page. And you're either going to stay in that chair until words are written, or you're going to give up and walk away. The ...”

“When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.”

“Im likely to stay here, pen in hand, until dusk comes and my writing melts into the twilight.”

“It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.”

“Action is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart.”

“When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.”