Once we understand how they think, we can predict their behaviour. And once we predict it well, we can manipulate it. That is diplomacy.

Pain cannot be ignored. However, it can be endured. When necessary, a great deal of pain can be endured. Just ask my mother.

Writing is an art but also a craft, which means it's a job. I don't teach. This is how the groceries get on the table. You sometimes make creative sacrifices to get the job done. All that said, I'm looking forward to getting out of the two-book-a-year schedule I'm on and to getting some self-indulgence going.

The act of reading is so intimate that readers are unpredictable.

There is very little sense that anybody really knows what works or why. But that's not a shock. And I don't think market research would solve that.

For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one's own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body.

If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe.

Think about a night like that often enough, you'll ask yourself a lot of questions. Most of them about yourself. The kind of person you are. What you'll do and why and when you'll do it. What you believe in. What you really believe in.

When you learn economy. It strips away self-indulgence. Just in the act itself it requires a certain amount of humility. You have to accept the fact that you might feel you can do better but in the moment you have to make a choice.

One day, when I am a braver man, I will tell her these things, and then I will look her in the eye, tell her I love her and ask her to be only mine. But until that day, we're just friends.

Pain cannot be ignored. However, it can be endured.