“Words are music to the ears, alone or together, with or without melody.”

“And because the world is too big and time is too short and you only have one life to live, read!”

“The heart is a repository of emotions--real, imagined, and invented, owned and borrowed, past, present, future--and there in your chest, operating at an average of 80 beats per minute at rest, is a...”

“Write in pictures. With your words, let the reader see not letters, but images. Be specific about every detail, but don't describe it--make it happen on the page, if you were writing fiction, or ma...”

“A blank page is no empty space. It is brimming with potential... It is a masterpiece in waiting -- yours.”

“Reading a book is an intimate experience that can change people's lives in profound ways. It also changes the life of its author.”

“There was a day when writers actually read," he grumbles. "They could quote Keats and Socrates. Now anyone with a keyboard and a fifth-grade education can call themselves a writer.”

“Women are huntresses until the day we die. Our perpetual thirst for the chase endures until our last breath. It remains while we are too focused on our careers to pursue love, when we have been bur...”

“Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes y...”

“I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when Im working on a story, Ill find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where theyve taken the story. Its as if ...”

“If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.”

“I was a woman and did not yet think of myself as a writer. I was a mapmaker.”

“I am fevered with the sunset I am fretful with the bay For the wander-thirst is on me And my soul is in Cathay.”

“As the Spanish proverb says "He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." So it is in traveling: a man must carry knowledge with him if he would...”