Being an editor doesn't make you a better writer - or vice versa. The worst thing any editor can do is be in competition with his writer.

You know the sultans used to light their garden parties with turtles? They'd put candles on their backs and let them wander around. Hundreds of them.

I think most writers' houses are disappointing. What's much more atmospheric and interesting are the places they wrote about.

When you're editing, you want to be the perfect appreciator, not another writer.

Too much time is wasted listening to the noise of the mind - and too little is spent living from the love and power of the heart.

What you don't do can be a destructive force.

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.

I dreamed really big when I was little.

All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity.

My earnest hope is that what we started in terms of building partnerships with communities across America will continue, that we will continue our efforts to reduce crime and violence.

We like the gift when we the giver prize.

[I talk politics with Ted Turner] quite often. Usually with a great deal of excitement, because he has one political view and I have another. Despite our politics,we've agreed to be friends.

Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.

All significant breakthroughs are break -“withs” old ways of thinking.