And I think that's important to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.

You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

Anyway, there's something wrong with everybody and it's up to you to know what you can handle.

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.

We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.

What we fear we often rage against.

I don't speak just so I can be heard

concentrate less on people and much on purpose. People can put your purpose in disarray

The Bible's blind, the Torah's deaf, the Qur'an is mute; if you burned them all together you'd get close to the truth.

All the brains in the world are powerless against the sort of stupidity that is in fashion.

I'm a very spiritual person and proud of my Mormon roots.

He who acts, spoils; he who grasps, lets slip.

The fool will upset the whole science of astronomy, but as the Holy Scripture shows, it was the sun and not the earth which Joshua ordered to stand still.

Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?

No one dressed by me ever looks like an idiot.

A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.