That’s right, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is simply too magnanimous to contain itself to one day. Did you go? What struck you about the event? Here’s the writerly wisdom and wit I collected on Day 2, with a few snippets of conversation I couldn’t help but overhear:

“When I get drunk I get more affectionate.”

“Writing is very intuitive. Sometimes we know something’s wrong in a story but not how to fix it.”

“An influential pastor in Princeton, New Jersey circa 1905 once said ‘We do not entertain any new ideas here.'”

“Theodore Roosevelt was often considered a traitor to his class–meaning he wasn’t a bigot.”

“She went to his wedding even while she has having an affair with him.”

“Genre writing is pleasing for a literary writer.”

“Historical fiction is always about the present as well as the past.”

“Literature is a way of evoking sympathy.”

“Writing is crystallized improvisation.”

“When I say books you say books! Books! Books!  Books! Books!”

“It’s important that the reader doesn’t know everything about the character but suspects that the author does.”

“When I say past you say tense. Past! Tense! Past! Tense!

“I’m into being interesting.”

“When I say Voyage of the Dawn Treader you say C.S. Lewis. Voyage of the Dawn Treader!…”

“Kurt Vonnegut is the original YA author.”

“I started writing at 7 or 8 years old and I was awesome. All of my sexy vampire stories were published under the pseudonym ‘Anne Rice.'”

“That sounds like diarrhea.”

“Books on writing make the invisible visible.”

“There’s always more to say about verbs.”

“Bad writing reveals what we don’t know.”

“The way writing is taught in the U.S. is completely wrong-headed.”

“The drama comes from the verb choice.”

“Recognizing your own habits and upending them is very refreshing.”

“As soon as I get comfortable with a draft, I must get suspicious of it.”

Progenitors of the quotes above include: two women sitting behind me in the Bovard Auditorium; woman in the shade near the YA Stage; Joyce Carol Oates; D.C. Pierson; Sean Beaudoin; Elizabeth Eulberg; Amy Spalding; Thomas Curwen; Constance Hale; Ben Yagoda