Happiness is making the most of what you have, and riches is making the most of what you've got.

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Arrival often brings nothing but a sense of desolation and disappointment.

Life is so extraordinary. Wonderful surprises are just around the most unexpected corners.

Writing is work, but it's also a compulsion, and once you get your characters on paper, you can't abandon them. You have to respond to them.

It was good, and nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of their character. So part of you goes everywhere with me. And part of me is yours, forever

She put out her hand and touched his forearm, as she would have touched some piece of porcelain or sculpture, just for the sheer animal pleasure of feeling its shape and curve beneath her fingertips.

The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence.

And the wicked thing is, that when we're really upset, we always take it out on the people who are closest and whom we love the most.

Things happen they way they're meant to. There's a pattern and a shape to everything...Nothing happens without a reason...Nothing is impossible...(Page 180).

There's a war on. We don't know how anything's going to end. We just have to grasp each fleeting moment of joy as it whizzes by.

I wasn't good enough. I had a little talent but not enough. There is nothing more discouraging than having just a little talent.

Every city has to deal with the problem of cars and public transport.

Redheads get so stereotyped. You're either exotic and wild or totally Victorian.

I was holding [my four-year-old daughter] and I said, 'Sophia, I love you more than anything in the universe.' And she turned to me and said, 'Daddy, universe or multiverse?'

The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism.

In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.

We'll have a baby who stutters repeatedly We'll name him history

Part of the way that I work is to observe.

Many dishes bring many diseases.

The key to a good life is this: If you're not going to talk about something during the last hour of your life, then don't make it a top priority during your lifetime.

Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.