How to Draw a Picture (XII) Know when you're finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset.

A life without love is like a tree without fruit.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

The joy is in the journey.

Maybe, now and then, we have to give up a portion of our kingdoms--the things we hold dearest--to find what it is God wants for us.

I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them.

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.

When you move your focus from competition to contribution life becomes a celebration. Never try to defeat people, just win their hearts.

... it is seldom a medical man has true religious views--there is too much pride of intellect.

I don't mind seeing two guys kissing, you know, as long as they're clean-shaven.

I focus on details, either of the body, or of objects that represent gender, sexuality, and other themes.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.