“Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain.”

“Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse to make something out of nothing, call it an obs...”

“I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sid...”

“But then, thats the beauty of writing storieseach one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, theres no feeling like it.", 3:AM Ma...”

“First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or ...”

“In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as a way of keepi...”

“It has been said that Shakespeare, the great delineator of human character, has failed in distinguishing his principal womenand that such as he meant to be amiable are all equally gentle and good. ...”

“People who love do the impossible all the time.”

“Protector and destroyer were two sides of the same coin. Who knew which one would come out in a toss-up?”

“I refused to believe that someone who had a voice that angelic could be bad. I knew it was illogical to think that way, but I had to believe in something good.”

“My body shook from pain, exhaustion, and the beginning of shock. I'd pay for all the powers I'd used, but the portal most of all. Good girls weren't supposed to open hell dimensions.”

“I have often observed that the state of motherhood can turn quite ordinary females into heroines . . .”