Evil Contained Is Not Evil Destroyed.

What I Want To Write About Has Changed Somewhat, And The Scope Of The Storytelling Has Changed Accordingly.

I Remember One Winter, When I Was About Five Or Six, I Spent Three Days With Another Boy, Tracking A Bobcat That Had Been Sighted In Another County Fifty Miles Away, But Which I Was Sure Had Come Into Our Neighborhood.

I Think I Make Better Use Of Language And Imagery Than When I Started Out.

Lester Del Rey Told Me Repeatedly That The First And Most Important Part Of Writing Fiction Is Just To Think About The Story. Don't Write Anything Down. Don't Try To Pull Anything Together Right Away. Just Dream For A While And See What Happens. There Isn't Any Timetable Involved, No Measuring Stick For How Long It Ought To Take. For Each Book, It Is Different. But That Period Of Thinking, Of Reflection, Is Crucial To How Successful Your Story Will Turn Out To Be.

What We Have In Life That We Can Count On Is Who We Are And Where We Come From, She Thought Absently. For Better Or Worse, That's What We Have To Sustain Us In Our Endeavors, To Buttress Us In Our Darker Moments, And To Remind Us Of Our Identity. Without Those Things, We Are Adrift.