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"I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin."
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"One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I have always been honest about my recollection of events."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Tim sends me a fairly ambitious workup in notebook form noting the passages we're going to cover and the chronology of the biblical events, and his commentaries on those things he's read and written."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Events alone rarely provide much guide to the future."
Author Name
Personal Development
"At all events, arbitration is more rational, just, and humane than the resort to the sword."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The second advantage claimed for naturalism is that it is equivalent to rationality, because it assumes a model of reality in which all events are in principle accessible to scientific investigation."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A president either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt that I could let up for a moment."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Once you begin to explain or excuse all events on racial grounds, you begin to indulge in the perilous mythology of race."
Author Name
Personal Development
"By a museum, I assume you mean an institution dedicated to the events of Sept. 11 and the aftermath. If that is done with sensitivity, I think it would be most appropriate."
Author Name
Personal Development
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"The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning."
Writing
"Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age."
Age
"None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter."
Life
"I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside."
Work
"I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life."
Life
"Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people."
People
"For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood."
Family
"Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!"
Nature
"It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away."
Life
"I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again."
Writing
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