I think writers can get too attached to these worlds they create, these characters they make real, so that, instead of ending the story where the sto….

Craft can get you through ninety percent of a piece, but it's art that carries you at the end..

What the readers want is a good story, and what the writers always want to luck into, it's a good story..

The truth is, poverty's the environment for alcoholism, and the reservations aren't rich. Maybe cleaning people up in fiction is just as dangerous as….

The stories I respect most aren't those with the rich, dense prose, but those which achieve a rich, deep effect with simple little nothing-sentences,….

Angels, demons, sex. Heaven, hell, war. Blood and royalty, history and magic, fire and ice. And a story you cannot put down. This is fantasy at its b….

It's important to look ahead, I think, to shape your stuff for - again - effect. Because it's just so easy to write long, flowy sentences, get lost i….

Writing, of course, it's not all in your head. Not talking about the 'manual' act of typing here either, but that, when your fiction's really working….

This is form and content and diction and tone and imagination all looking up at the exact same moment: When Molly Tanzer claps once at the front of t….

Football's another sport I absolutely despise. Along with baseball. Really, for me, basketball's the only real sport, the only one that matters..

Life's so much easier when you're not always maintaining two worlds: the one formed of lies, which feels real, and the one you live in, which often f….

I do love the challenge of screenplays. They're so difficult, such an alien form. It makes them endlessly fascinating. Something I can't keep my fing….

When I am writing a novel, though, then it's usually three or four hours a day. Ideally, right after lunch until three or four, but sometimes picking….

There's no really other way to learn writing than by writing. So accelerate that as much as you can. The more you write, the better you'll get. What ….

Art isn't and shouldn't be responsible. If it is, it isn't functioning as art..

It's just the garbage in/garbage out trick. If you're not taking any fiction in, good or bad, then how can you be spitting any back out (good or bad)….

This is what noir is, what it can be when it stops playing nice--blunt force drama stripped down to the bone, then made to dance across the page..