“Before there were books, we read each other.”

“Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick.”

“You cherry-pick events that are relevant to the story question and construct a gauntlet of challenge (read: the plot) that will force the protagonist to put his money where his mouth is. Think bapt...”

“If I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now I have your attention.”

“...what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.”

“The river was so blue it seemed to be breathing.”

“a single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. and, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted ...”

“Love is the beauty of being.”

“In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't ge...”

“If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?”

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

“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.”