"Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street."
"Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s."
"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."
"Books are a uniquely portable magic."
"you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will."
"I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh."