Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.
I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.
She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.
I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen-whether I'm working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book-it's usually because I'm trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place.
You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.
I've worked for law firms, I've worked for corporations, and for the past 20 years, I've been writing working for myself, and believe me it's a lot better. That's a big part of the James Bond panache, that you're responsible, 100 percent responsible, for the success or failure of your mission in life, whatever it is.
Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself.
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.
I'll scream!" "Likely. If not before, certainly during. I expect they'll hear ye at the next farm; you've got good lungs.
In your world everything must have a beginning and an end. If it does not, you call it eternal. In my view, there is no such thing as beginning and end - these are all related to time. Timeless being is entirely in the now. Being and not-being alternate and their reality is momentary. The immutable Reality lies beyond space and time.
I think it's much more radical to see and show things as they look instead of making them somehow subversive through alienation or estrangement.