“In real life, couples bond and war over a million different things. The causes of divorce are like beautiful, unique snowflakes.”

“A good approach is to allow one dream per novel. Then, in the final revision, go back and get rid of that, too.”

“Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half of a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess.”

“...it has been demonstrated through years of workshops that the Artist Within tends to make the same mistakes as the artist within everybody else.”

“We do not propose any rules; we offer observations. "No right on red" is a rule. "Driving at high speed toward a brick wall usually ends badly" is an observation.”

“No, when you love someone you spend hours and hours with them, and even the mightiest forces in the netherworld could not say whether the hours you spend increase your love or if you simply spend m...”

“He thought she knew what he meant, but the biggest mistake you can make is thinking they know what you mean.”

“Overuse at best is needless clutter; at worst, it creates the impression that the characters are overacting, emoting like silent film stars. Still, an adverb can be exactly what a sentence needs. T...”

“Dialogue is about freeing human beings from the beliefs and attitudes that make human beings miserable.”

“I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up t...”

“One says the things which one feels the need to say, and which the other will not understand: one speaks for oneself alone.”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”