"No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words."
"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards."
Soren Kierkegaard on Experience"The only source of knowledge is experience."
Albert Einstein on Experience"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn."
C. S. Lewis on Experience"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."
Oscar Wilde on Experience"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
Mark Twain on Experience"Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's a valid part of any endeavour, not just writing."
"When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write, I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'"