Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

But the past is long, and the future is short.

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.

Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.

God gave us the access, but we need to exercise courage to have it. No one lacks the access, but it’s only few that have the courage to grab it!

If you fear nothing, then you are not brave. You are merely too foolish to be afraid.

The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.

The more the art dominated my life and my house, the more the house became a home.

it is harder to be philosophical when you are young.

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

The truth of the matter is there is significant debate among judicial scholars today as to whether or not we've gone off on the wrong path with regard to Supreme Court decisions.

I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.