Mizzy has, again, wandered into the garden, like a child who feels no fealty to adult conversation.

Some suggestions for you :

Constantine, eight years old, was working in his father's garden and thinking about his own garden, a square of powdered granite he had staked out and combed into rows at the top of his family's land.

Venture too far for love... and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port.

Yes, she thinks, this probably how it must feel to be a ghost. It's a little like reading, isn't it—that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer.

I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.

The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things.

Barrett lingers awhile. He's not eager to relinquish the strange pleasure of sitting in the green chair, surrounded by the ever-diminishing offerings that had, just yesterday, been daily articles, watching the apartment disappear, piece by piece.

I know a conquistador when I see one. I know all about making a splash. It isn't hard. If you shout loud enough, for long enough, a crowd will gather to see what all the noise is about. It's the nature of crowds. They don't stay long, unless you give them reason.

You live with the threat of my extinction. I live with it too.

It's remarkable, being alive.

Here's the sting of livingness. He's back after his nightly voyage of sleep, all clarity and purpose; he's renewed his citizenship in the world of people who strive and connect, people who mean business, people who burn and want, who remember everything, who walk lucid and unafraid.

As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.

I am beginning to understand the true difference between youth and age. Young people have time to make plans and think of new ideas. Older people need their whole energy to keep up with what's already been set in motion.

You have failed in the most base and human of ways--you have not imagined the lives of others.

He seemed to believe that from such humble, inert elements as flour, shortening, and drab little envelopes of yeast, life itself could be produced.