"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."
"Books are a uniquely portable magic."
"Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s."
"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."
"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."
"Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing."