Hope is a horrible thing, you know. It's a plague. It's like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and someone just keep pulling it and pulling it."STATE OF WONDER

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

I don't like to be polarizing. It's not who I am.

Elections are always a little bit funny. People start saying things and emphasizing differences. After the election, my hope is, is that people start emphasizing what we have in common.

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

If you can't test it, don't build it. If you don't test it, rip it out.

We had the IRA ceasefire in August 1994 and a lot of people assumed that a deal had been done - which wasn't right.

The customer is always right.

Man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

Hollywood is an illusion. These intense workplaces, with very close relationships, a few months at a time - and then it ends.

Entertainment is about taking people away from the regular order of things when there is some chaos and pain and stress.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.