Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone's home and backyard.

You will always have time for what you make time for

Lincoln was less well-read than many a professor or journalist, but what he read, he read deeply.

As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves.

Life is not a dress rehearsal - wake up every day excited to live out your purpose.

That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.

I think that human beings, even the ones who are sometimes hurting you, are often very, very confused at their center.

Whatever you think of Romney and his politics, as a human being there's none better. As a man of integrity, man of character, there's none better.

He doesn't mind if he dies... indeed, he would like to die; but yet he fears to fall. He would welcome a long sleep; but not at the price of falling to it.

Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.