Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.

Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.

I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.

I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.

How I'm glad to go back home!Once I truly have no more worry. Many of those who are in a hurry Endure setbacks in the outcome.

Manna will definitely fall from above, but it’s gonna fall for those who cultivated “manner farms” on the clouds.

I don’t care too much about talking, but I don’t like being alone.

Sometimes he was weird, sometimes he was Captain Douchebag, but he was always my best friend.

I'm always trying to learn and grow, so my diet has, over the years, evolved.

If I could rub a genie and anything could happen? Truthfully, my other love, and this is a complete 180, but I'd love to do a spy or an espionage pic, like a James Bond movie.

To seek out in a world full of joy the one thing that is certain to give you pain, and hug it to your bosom with all your strength; that's the greatest human happiness.

O, God of wonder, enlarge my capacity to be amazed at what is amazing, and end my attraction to the insignificant.

The more I've traveled to war zones, the more I'm convinced that the impact and the effects are way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine.