“It doesn't matter what the scene is. You can see it and you can hear it, but you're still staring at a blank screen. That's the nuts and bolts of writing.”
“One of the big things that distinguishes the strongest fiction from writing that's perhaps without depth is a real understanding of what real human beings are like.”
“The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.”
“With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I'm all of the actors and I'm the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I'm all of that. So if it's good or bad, it's all up to me.”
“One of the big breakthroughs, I think for me, was reading Robert A. Heinlein's four rules of writing, one of which was, 'You must finish what you write.' I never had any problem with the first one, 'You must write' — I was writing since I was a kid. But I never finished what writing.”
