"Tell your story. Don't try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Any starting writer starts out with other people's voices. But as quickly as you can start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there will always be better writers than you and there will always be smarter writers than you, but you are the only you."
"Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!"
"There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong."
"Reading is important.Books are important.Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)"
"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."
"Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent."