A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

I looked into your eyes and was captivated by the chaos that ran through you. I wish you hadn't said all the things I wanted to hear!

the past is a liarfull of promises it can't keepbut like a foolish first loveyou keep going back to it

No one dies pre-maturely. As is meant, happens naturally

I don't want to sound obnoxious, but I like to think I brought it another step. I was able to bring people who were casually interested in boxing together.

I think it's just a conglomerate of everybody's influences that comes out on the record, and live as well.

We must know, if only in order to learn not to know. The supreme lesson of human consciousness is to learn how not to know. That is, how not to interfere.

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.

I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.

Capitalism or market economy is that system of social cooperation and division of labor that is based on private ownership of the means of production.

Counting the ways the Book of Mormon brings peace to the soul is like counting the sand on the seashore.