I believe that with enough practice and good faith, you can learn to recognize when the work is achieved.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.

The characters that I create are parts of myself and I send them on little missions to find out what I don’t know yet.

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

Some things arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever.

Negative people present us with an accelereted personal growth opportunity.

The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn, you can't congeal: There is a forward motion to yearning.

The more you respect and focus on the singular and the strange, the more you become aware of the universal and infinite.

The act of longing for something will always be more intense than the requiting of it.

Life is a disease.

Eat like you love your body.

Every friend was once a stranger and if you know this, you have to understand that conversations are the beginning of connection

If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.

Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closest thing to a town square.

Living in New York, you get a lot of confidence; when I go back to Michigan, I realise how obnoxious and demanding and straightforward I am.

I do think I have an ability to record sensual and emotional facts and factoids, to construct a convincing surface of what life feels like, both physical life and emotional life.

It is very difficult to tell Americans that they can't do something.

It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.

Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it.

These kids are the future of the National Football League. They're the next generation that will be playing high school football, NCAA football, and some even to the pros.