But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

I wish the army had taught us how to navigate feelings as easily as they did a starless night sky.

For the sincere student, it mustn't be enough to simply understand Jiu Jitsu. We must seek to understand ourselves.

You would have to be naive to think you can appear on television and not have the material edited in some way.

Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame.

O! how short a time does it take to put an end to a woman's liberty!

There is no wrong way to have a body.

Mathematics is the only instructional material that can be presented in an entirely undogmatic way.

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.

The only trouble with this world today lies in our lack of understanding of the power of imagination.

I know it's not fair to ask you to be with me when we can't even sleep in the same bed, but I'll love you better than anyone else could. I'll take care of you and make you happy. I know I can.