I don't do much more than organise other people's ideas and insights and thoughts, and sort of harvest them, and inventory them and present them.

Sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold.

My way of being with people is probably incredibly unhealthy, in that I'll be incredibly social, and I won't write a word for maybe a year, and I'll just be with people, going to parties and soaking up stories, and just sort of recharging all of my ideas.

Verbs allow you to communicate a story in a much more converged or involuntary way for a reader. The verbs allow you to come in under the radar, below people's defenses.

Everybody's trying to make every minute of the present last forever. Preserve every second.

We're so much more likely to feel sympathy for an animal than another person; thus, the best fiction uses animals to define truly humane behavior.