“Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that all writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the status quo.”

“One ought not to fall in love with someone by way of their writing. One must be especially careful if the writing is good, for then one assumes the writer is good, funny, clever, profound, sensitive, smart, wise, loving, and true. It is unfair to the writer and dangerous to the reader to hold the writer to the standards of his writing, for in his writing, the writer is his best self; in person, he is a person, and we all know what that means.”

“A good fiction writer can write any character or any story that she wants to write. The importance, IMO, is a burning desire to tell that person's story.”

“We may say that the characters in fairytales are ‘good to think with’…[and that] the job of the fairytale is to show that Why? questions cannot be answered except in one way: by telling the stories. The story does not contain the answer, it is the answer.”

“I tell writers not to think about writing short stories or novels. Just write one good scene. And then a novel becomes a bunch of good scenes stacked on top of each other.”

“Like JJ Abrams,  creators just want to tell a story and entertain people. So why only focus in one way of telling it?Give readers another way to connect with your story.  Entertainment does not need to be contained in one medium. Think about telling your story in many mediums.”