The best investment is in the tools of one’s own trade. - Benjamin Franklin

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. - Henry David Thoreau

By reading a lot of novels in a variety of genres, and asking questions, it's possible to learn how things are done - the mechanics of writing, so to speak - and which genres and authors excel in various areas. - Nicholas Sparks

A cliffhanger is when… - Buffy Andrews

You could be writing the book that changes your life. - Brandon Sanderson

Readers tend to like a character who is at least superficially like themselves. But they quickly lose interest unless this particular character is somehow out of the ordinary. - Orson Scott Card

The glory of the protagonist is always paid for by a lot of secondary characters. - Tony Hoagland

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences. - Terry Pratchett

I must be cruel, only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. - William Shakespeare

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. - Oscar Wilde

Whatever these forces are that make people do dumb things, they are powerful, they are often invisible, and they lurk even in the best of environments. - Ed Catmull

The way to tell a really big story, I think, is to tell a really small story. - Bruce Feiler

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written. - Amos Bronson Alcott

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. - Orson Scott Card

Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost. - Thomas Bernhard

As much as I am fascinated with the stereotypical narcissistic serial killer, it’s the unsuspecting, truly friendly person next door who you smile and wave to as you pass by that are the scariest. They are the ones who hide in plain sight. The ones who don’t get caught because no one suspects that they could do anything like that. It’s the ones you don’t know whom you should fear. - Brianna Joy

He who fights with monsters should take care that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Even a wooden coffin and six feet of earth can’t hold back a story if it needs to be told. - Anonymous

To us forever are the gates of heaven shut. For who shall open them to us again? We go on for all time abhorred by all; a blot on the face of God’s sunshine; an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. - Bram Stoker, Dracula