All of my writing is God-given.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

You must know that you are worth much to me whether you accomplish anything or not. Even if you are rejected in the world's eyes, you are valuable to me.

With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.

Good intentions never change anything. They only become a deeper and deeper rut.

Believing is such a comfort that it's hard to give up a belief just because it isn't true.

To race Formula three is very high risk and I am not going to take a chance. Thank god I am not doing it!

I became a guy who wanted to be a comedian someday, or a comic actor. The way I put it was, I'll be like Danny Kaye. He was kind of the model I had in mind.

I want to stay away from politics, or else I'll probably end up putting my size fifteen foot into my mouth

The novelist can't successfully depict such horrifying reality. But she can, and must, try, to bear witness. There are many ways of doing this; the mode I prefer is indirect.

The shaman has access to a superhuman dimension and a superhuman condition, and by being able to do that he affirms the potential for transcendence in all people. He is an exemplar, if you will.

Seems to me that there is no better way to experience the depth of loss than after the fact. No more powerful instrument of imbuing value in an object than parting with it.