When you are in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else. - Margaret Atwood

A mystery is solved with a story. The story starts with a clue, but the trouble is that you usually have no idea what the clue is, even if you think you know. - Lemony Snicket

I don’t plot my books rigidly, follow a preconceived structure. A novel mustn’t be a closed system - it’s a quest. - Kurt Vonnegut