Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

...I'll tell you something else too

The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size

I started out as a lousy actress and have remained one.

Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for.

I've been involved in mixed martial arts since 1997 when I first started working for the UFC.

You can't assume that kindness is an inherited trait. It is learned behavior.

In Paradise there are things which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has thought of.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

To leave a place, you'd best leave everything behind; all your possessions, including memory. Traveling's not as easy as it's made out to be.

The Palestinian Rifle is ready and we will aim it if they try to prevent us from praying in Jerusalem.