"Im trying to avoid that thing where you get a story in your head thats very clean. I think there are too many people that come up with a very simple story where theyre the hero, and they dont learn anything."
"Isnt it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."
"The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what its about and why youre doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course thats why he was doing that, and that means that...") and its magic and wonderful and strange."
"The stock market was created by the telegraph and the telephone, and its panics are engineered by carefully orchestrated stories in the press."
"Stories help explain themselves; if you know how something happened, you begin to see why it happened."
"In telling a story, in depicting it, one makes it exist in its particularity with its beginning and its end, its glory or its shame; and this is the way it actually must be lived."
"Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded. If all you want is plot, go and read a Tom Clancy novel."