For 'Seabiscuit,' I interviewed 100 people I never met.

This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.

People think I must have been turning cartwheels on the night I sealed the movie deal - which was only two days after sealing the book deal - but I was really quite terrified.

I think authors can get into trouble viewing the subject matter as their turf

It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.

The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.

For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write

Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.

Without dignity, identity is erased.

I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled...and I just wanted to keep being filled.

His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

They say the eyes are the apertures to the soul. If that is so, I feared Locusta's soul was far darker than even Nero's.

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long.

Realize life as an end in itself. Functioning is all there is.

Unification is not our present goal. That is a future program.

All bands are in danger of losing their identity. Constantly.

Healthy love, I always think, is... wanting the person you love to be more of themselves. And I think for a parent that's a challenge, because you have to let a baby spread its wings.

When we are on the water, our contemplative impulses range from the intense to the nearly absent.

The part of life which we really live is short.