Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock.

People forget years and remember moments.

When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days.

Clichés so often befall vain people.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

There is some reason, obviously, that you are drawn to your material, but the way in which you explore it might come to be quite different from what you would expect.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.

I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.

I know that by what I write cannot change the wrong world, but I can change the wrong attitude of the world toward me.

The secret of success in life is the persistent practice of making choices.

I'm one day closer…!

Pennsylvania is a very tough state; people don't last long in Pennsylvania politics.

Aging is out of your control. How you handle it, though, is in your hands.

The average 20-year-old serving us in Iraq knows more about their country's national security than the average 20-year political veteran serving in the Congress today.

My biggest prediction for the future is that people are going to start looking after individual investors.

It's very gratifying to me to see my works bringing people closer to my country.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

I can't tell you 100 percent what makes a relationship work. But I can see something good coming and I can see something bad coming.