All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material.

For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.

We must each achieve greater individual consciousness and self-knowledge, and project mindful kindness toward everything and everyone.

We are comfortable with formulas, but the best happens when the formula doesn't work.

If you want to do something then be the best.

While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.

She's so pure, Moses couldn't even part her knees.

I scientifically engineer my music to be as accessible as possible.

I'm a huge fan of the Navy. My father was a Naval historian, and I've been studying Naval battles forever.

I have been a bit of a risk-taker all my life.

It generally troubles them [the reformers] not a whit that their remedy implies a complete reconstruction of society, or even a reconstitution of human nature.