For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.

It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

That's the way I remember them, heading for an exit.

Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.

Art is the triumph over chaos.

Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.

I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.

Then it is dark; it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains.

Tell yourself the stories you need to tell. But don't be fooled by them. Never live your own lies.

Eucharisteo has taught me to trust that there is always enough God. He has no end.

I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.

I'm a joke comic. I tell jokes.

I never accept lengthy film roles nowadays, because I am always so afraid I will die in the middle of shooting and cause such awful problems.

Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.

I had wanted to make a film about World War II for some time, but I didn't really want to do something that was set in the trenches, so to speak.

I almost can't even put to words how happy I am that I got married.

When we love, we are the universe and the universe lives in us.

Effective readers, even at their earliest levels, read in five to seven word phrases rather than word by word.