Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is the Night,' an experimental novel.

All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.

Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.

Often in gothic novels there's a large house, an estate, and it's symbolic of that culture. Usually it's sort of moldering or rotted or something, and sometimes it's a whole community.

You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.