I believe I encountered death, which was a bit too much for a seven-year-old.

I generally wade in blind and trust to fate and instinct to see me through.

Fear and I were old buddies, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.

The world is full of ghosts, and some of them are still people.

What was the worst thing you've ever done? I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing.

My first real breakthrough collided with the last months of Callaghan's Labour government, which had every intention of enjoying my success as much as I did.

Occasionally.. .what you have to do is go back to the beginning and see everything in a new way.

If I planned everything out in advance, I'd expire of boredom.

An average working day begins at 8 or 9 am, includes an hour for lunch, and ends at 5 or 6 pm.

I had a connoisseur's... appreciation of fear.

Why is it that I notice so many brilliant scientists using Macs for their personal computers why does the Lawrence Livermore & Berkeley Labs buy millions of dollars worth of Macs?

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

Again and again the Church of Christ has been all but engulfed, as men might have deemed, in the billows; again and again the storm has been calmed by the Master, Who had seemed for awhile to sleep.

As long as I loved and served Christ I could be anything I wanted to be.

There are certain things I do not talk about.

My Sister Rosa was bumped from the schedule. None of my books has ever been bumped before. It freaked me out.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don't know how strong until we're pushing out our babies.

Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says "Bad war, good soldier." Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.

Even a good place gets to be a rut, especially if you're standing in it alone... Alone and lonely have the same root.