And indeed, I am a warmhearted and thoroughly domestic man who gets up and makes pancakes for his children and kisses them on the head when he sends them off to their day.

If you are writing any book about the end of the world, what you are really writing about is what's worth saving about it.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

I have any number of completely dark obsessions and fascinations, and none of this was present in my profile or my growing profile as a writer.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one.

I have been loving you a little more every minute since this morning.

We tend to be preoccupied by our problems when we have a heightened sense of vulnerability and a diminished sense of power. Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.

To do more for the world than the world does for you - that is success.

People always say in the end you only regret the choices you didn't make but I really think you also regret the choices you were foolish enough to make.

I understand how important the automakers are to America. And I understand a bankruptcy; a failure in that industry wouldn't be a good thing. It's something we should avoid.

I'm not a method actor, but I'm affected by the life I share my life with during shooting. It's always a very strange and special period for me.

In the age of information, ignorance is a choice. Question everything. Don't believe everything you hear. Come to your own conclusions.

Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment.

There are tonalities which are noble and others which are vulgar, harmonies which are calm or consoling, and others which are exciting because of their boldness.

People are dream killers--you've got to be careful who you give emotional access to.