A nation of unhappy teachers makes for a sadder and more endangered America.

Among the worst things about growing old is the loss of those irreplaceable friends who added richness and depth to your life.

I envy the tireless intimacy of women’s friendship, its lastingness, and its unbendable strength.

I don’t know when reading books became the most essential thing about me, but it happened over the years and I found myself the most willing servant of what I considered a rich habit.

Moonrise is a fabulous novel and my damn wife wrote it and that’s me up there near Highlands shouting it out to the hills.

It eases my soul that I share a house with [Cassandra King] a novelist of such rare and distinctive gifts.

My father managed to change his entire life after I wrote a novel about his brutal regime as a family man. It took resoluteness and courage for my father to change, and I need to acknowledge that.

It’s the great surprise of my life that I ended up loving [my father] so much.

I have always been attracted to male writers who can demonstrate their love and affection for women with ease, yet not draw attention to themselves.

I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language.

I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid.

If you do believe in God, and your first instinct in all things must be gratitude: for creation, or love, for mercy.

He had memorized the entire Qur'an and lectured on the nature of evil, which, like a shadow, cannot exist independently of the good silhouettes.

I was surprised when I finally moved to Boston and the East Coast, to discover that there weren't that many vibraphone players around. And I was the only one playing with four mallets.

Think against your feelings; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking.

Optimists think that this is the best of all possible worlds; pessimists fear they are right.

I would really love to go on an archaeological dig.

The rights of the individual should be the primary object of all governments.

From experience I can say that we can make our nation corruption free. Only promises won't help...Irade Nek Hone Chahiye.

Fighting, to me, seems barbaric. I don't really like it. I enjoy out-thinking another man and out-maneuvering him, but I still don't like to fight.

We get a feeling, if we can, about what we think the company is worth.