A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

the battle for our culture must be waged at the level of the imagination.

Invest in friendships but be aware of those who only love your public success for personal gain. People who really love you cover your private failures!

Regular people have such a hard time listening to the low hum of instinct.

Healing begins with owing your scars & disowning that which caused them

I met Elton John at an Interview dinner, and we just sort of became friends. He's got such a wicked sense of humor.

When I was four or five, my father had a general store in Winchester and I don't think the farmers could ever leave on Saturday afternoon until I had been placed up on the counter to sing.

No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

Look at everything through the lens of eternity. If you will do this, life will take on a different perspective.

You learn about gratitude by giving. You learn about humility by receiving, and in the pecking order of human qualities, I'd probably put humility somewhere before gratitude.

Every man is an infinitely repelling orb, and holds his individual being on that condition.