“I like my first lines short and declarative. No complicated sentences. Of course, that's not really a Scott thing. It's pretty classic grab-the-reader technique.”

“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.”

“Scott noticed Will staring at it and grinned. "Like what you see?" Woolsey Scott asked. "I do enjoy these surprise midnight declarations. Go along, have at it.”

“It was like being trapped forever in the present tense of the first line of a first reader.”

“Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.”

“My first impulse is always to behave, about everything, as if I feared complications. But I don't fear them— I really like them. They're quite my element.”