The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your ideas?"And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can."[Keynote Address, University of the Arts, 134th Commencement (Philadelphia, PA, May 17, 2012)]

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.

I remember when it was all done in first draft telling Gene Wolfe, who is the wisest writer I know and has written more excellent novels than any man I've met, that I thought I had now learned how to write a novel. Gene looked at me, and smiled kindly. "You never learn how to write a novel," he told me. "You only learn to write the novel you're on.

I make them up,' I tell them. 'Out of my head.