We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.
Whenever I'm with my [teenager], I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
For books I want to keep reading, it's definitely the voice. It must be a voice I've never heard before, and it must have its own particular intelligence. By 'voice,' I don't mean vernacular. It has to have its own particular history and world that it inhabits.
I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.