Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part that is obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass.

Envy is one of the scorpions of the mind, often having little to do with the objective, external world.

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.

To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.

How we learn is what we learn.

The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.

Rather than risking feeling disappointed, they’re choosing to live disappointed.

A crisis creates the opportunity to dip deep into the reservoirs of our very being, to rise to levels of confidence, strength, and resolve that otherwise we didn't think we possessed.

For most people, I'm just Alice. But I don't mind. Now, if I were Alice the ax murderer, then I'd hate it.

Our task is not one of producing persuasive propaganda; Christianity shows its greatness when it is hated by the world.

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.

I didn't grow up on the porch of a cabin looking out over the 90 acres that the mule was plowing with Paw-Paw playing the banjo. But I was always interested in folk music.

Documentarian Laura Poitras has crafted a first-rate Hitchcockian-type thriller telling the story of Edward Snowden.

Sometimes there's one person in the audience laughing hysterically, and it's so much fun. You end up playing the entire play to them.

Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I'm borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.

I believe education in music, theater, dance, and the visual arts... is part of a well-rounded education and can provide so much joy, now and in the future.