“i’m going to love again so quietlyno one will know i’m home.”

“You fill a hungry place shaped like your darkness.”

“Nostalgia is best cured via horse whipping.”

“I am protective of the gentle slope of stomach bulging like an early pregnancy, at my waist. I've earned its existence with everything I've been forced to swallow.”

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.”

“Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.”

“Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down, winnow, chop, hack, prune, and trim, remove every superfluous word, compress, compr...”

“And once you've been to this Center, this Truth, you'll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again.”

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love yo...”

“What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is ...”

“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.”