“I love research so much that I do an enormous amount; it helps put off the moment of starting to write the story.”

When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside.

She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls.

I wish Monkeys could Skype. Maybe one day.

You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.

Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.

Ive learned never to try and force words to come.

… I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of “writer’s block”.

It isn’t like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there’s a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.

My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.

My attitude is that if anybody of any age wants to read a book, let them, but I do think that no child would want to read Boneland.

At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.

It’s where I keep all my things. Get a lot of compliments on this.

Hitting the gym to release stress is not nearly as effective as hitting the people that cause the stress to begin with.

If you are going to write, nothing will stop you, and if you are not going to write, nothing will make you.

Oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis.

The horrible truth is that I am lazy and I am going to write and do bits that just hand themselves to me.

Don’t call me son unless you’re going to include me in your will. (When Adolph Rupp called him, “Son.”)

The people who know basketball, their elevators don’t go to the top.

Carefully watch how people live, get an intuitive sense as to what they might want and then go with it.

they’ve got television and the electronic games that they can bury themselves in like ostriches. They don’t have to pay attention to what’s going on in the world around them.

I didn’t think I was going to have to do three, but the idiot kept getting reelected.

Sometimes if I tell people, ‘I’m afraid that I’m really a fraud,’ or ‘I have a lot of self-doubt,’ they go.

The ones that you sing when you’re driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.