Always remember, any book you haven’t read is still a new book.

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

Some artists benefit less from being interviewed than they do from being left alone.

As adults, we can develop and change our opinions. In childhood, we establish the truth of our hearts.

To understand is to forgive even oneself.

After I won the title, I was confronted with the real world. People do not behave naturally anymore - hypocrisy is everywhere.

Science is about exploring, and the only way to uncover the secrets of the universe is to go and look.

I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm.

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

Everybody has the answers or they'll make them up for you. Just once I'd like to hear a brand-new question.

Why are they called a-part-ments, when they're all stuck together?

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle