All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.

Misery loves another idiot with a jukebox where his soul should be.

Nothing on Earth is so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.

At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.

The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.

At about the age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound.

The single biggest reason I got my stories taken in various literary magazines - and I want to stress this - is because I refused to give up. Period.

If you want to fight a cult, you've got to form a cult.

To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.

They may try to stop you by their words and deeds, but like air you will rise above it all. You are unstoppable

When fortune favors fools, it is to punish them for the sake of the wise.

Stand out or Fade out! for ‘me-too’ Brands have a shorter shelf life

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats - the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms - while the field hands are left with the scraps.

Power is making a statement about who you are.

I am genuinely an Independent. I agree more often than not with Democrats on domestic policy. I agree more often than not with Republicans on foreign and defense policy. I'm an Independent.

Hear Jesus as a family and serve Him. Care about people and love people.

So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.

Consider a 15- or 20-year fixed-rate mortgage instead of a 30-year, if you can afford the monthly payments - they may not be as high as you think.