"It was the most important thing I'd ever done, and I had no idea what I was doing."

"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones."

"There's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst."

"I'm a slow writer. I'm a fast reader."

"You can't deny the past; you can't deny what you've done. Only by admitting who you are and what you've done can you ever hope to change."