Bloodchild and Other Stories

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.

Shyness is shit. It isn’t cute or feminine or appealing. It’s torment, and it’s shit.

I'm Valerie Rye,' she said, savoring the words. 'It's all right for you to talk to me.

What are you?" I whispered."What are we to you?" She lay still, rested her head on her topmost coil. "You know me as no other does," she said softly. "You must decide.

If you work hard enough at something that doesn't matter, you can forget for a while about the things that do.

Read every day and learn from what you read.

Bloodchild" is my pregnant man story.

She just couldn't face caring for a child all alone.' 'People do it all the time.' 'She wasn't "people", she was herself. She knew what she could handle and what she couldn't.

Shyness is shit. It isn’t cute or feminine or appealing. It’s torment, and it’s shit. I

It’s too easy to follow bad but attractive leaders, embrace pleasurable but destructive habits, ignore looming disaster because maybe it won’t happen after all—or maybe it will only happen to other people. That kind of thinking is part of what it means to be adolescent.