God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement, '" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives.

They called her witch because she knew how to heal herself.

I worked with Cameron Crowe, and Id love to work with him again.

My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are.

Every time I look into the mirror, I want to see a man whose mother, sister, wife and daughter are proud to call their own.

People always make mistakes when they fancy themselves exceptions.

I don't want everyone to like me, and I don't choose who likes me. You have to give them the choice, give them the option.

I think a fundamentalist is somebody who believes something unshakably and isn't going to change their mind.

Full many a glorious morn I have seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

One of the 12 steps is to admit that you're powerless, but I think that's bullshit. I think it's important to empower yourself by facing the stuff that triggers you.