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All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going lo...more

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All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop.She's realized the real problem with stories - if you keep them going l...more

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October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he wo...more

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Destiny smells of dust and the libraries of the night.

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Destiny smells of dust and the libraries of night.

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The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your ideas?"

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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

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The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your i

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Richard put away the Narnia books, convinced, sadly, that they were an allegory; that an author (whom he had trusted) had been attempting to slip some...more

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Television and cinema were all very well, but these stories happened to other people. The stories I found in books happened inside my head. I was, in ...more

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When I was a child, I pestered my elders for stories.

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I wanted stories, and I wanted them always, and I wanted the experience that only fiction could give me: I wanted to be inside them.

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There is another version of the tale. That is the tale the women tell each other, in their private language that the men-children are not taught, and ...more

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The boy was a model pupil, forgettable and easily forgotten, and he sent much of his spare time in the back of the English class where there were shel...more

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We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as be...more