For the twenty million Americans who are hungry tonight, for the homeless freezing tonight, literature is as useless as a knowledge of astronomy.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.

I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.

I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don't laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions.

David, I’ll fly for you, if you’ll love me!”“Fly, then.”“I can’t fly, but love me anyway.”“Poor wingless child!”“Is it so hard to love me?”“Do you think you are easy, my illusive possession?

Calvi was sobbing. This couldn't be! A moment ago the Pope was healthy, smiling. How could His Holiness be no longer? Only a month into his papacy!

What matters are not the truths other people tell us or the practices that we are able to mimic, but the spiritual discoveries we make through personal investigation.

Artists of all sorts remain youthful for so long, and in many cases attain a grand old age. The explanation is that they live in an almost permanent condition of stimulation and excitement.

I definitely have a gift for language that is rhythmic and attractive to the ear, and I have interesting [verbal] imagery which I guess is a poetic touch.

The months fall to shards at my feet.

Talking pictures are like putting lip rouge on the Venus de Milo.

I feel like a slave, and in a way like an artist, because I need to get inspiration everyday, from everything and everyone.

Walt Disney was my great hero.