He sits at the table and reads novels, old favorites of his, the words and plots and characters comforting and lived-in and unchanged.

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.

. . . breathing slowly and rubbing his palm against his chest as if to soothe his heart.

There was something scary and anxiety-inducing about being in a space where nothing seemed to be forbidden to him, where everything was offered to him and nothing was asked in return

This isn't fair, he would think in those moments. This isn't friendship. It's something, but it's not friendship. He felt he had been hustled into a game of complicity, one he never intended to play.

And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.

My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.

It's a good story, ' he said. He even grinned at me. 'I'll tell you.''Please, ' I said.And then he did.

He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship.

I trust a few people in my life but there is one who gets my full trust. and that is my book.

The only way to be productive is to realize we don't HAVE TO be productive. Our goal is to PLEASE God, not APPEASE God.

Perhaps pondering words is also a form of seeking justice. If a monologue can invite a chorus, then perhaps it can speak for others as well.

Allah exalts whom he wills!

Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

When I am writing, I focus one hundred percent on my writing. Then, by the time I'm half way through the book, I'm already thinking about the ending.

There is inside you all of the potential to be whatever you want to be all of the energy to do whatever you want to do.

I find myself in situations that I know would be unbelievable pictures and I have to gauge, Is this worth taking the camera out? Am I gonna lose the moment? Am I gonna get a dirty look from Sting?

Enemies are an indication of character.