I had discovered a terrible vulnerability I myself which I think of not as cowardliness but as an ability to imagine too much.

We live in stories. What we are is stories. We do things because of what is called character, and our character is formed by the stories we learn to live in.

The specific danger is us; we are rampant; this earth is our only friend; we are destroying it increment by increment at a horrific rate. We must understand that we can't buy it back.

Writing is a funny business. You sit in your room and listen to voices and write everything down. What kind of a profession is that?

We continually use stories to hold up as mirrors to ourselves.

What I wanted was some dreamlike Frank Lloyd Wright bungalow where we could sit on the veranda forever and it would always be twilight in the temperate zones, in the most beautiful house.

Don't worry about meaning. If a story's any good, it can't help but have meaning. Let the PhDs tell you what your story means.

In a story, nothing is real until it is acted upon.

They knew bullshit, and they knew about the ruling class; dying for a ruling class cause was almost always bullshit.

One of finest evocations of life in Western America in recent memory... Powerful and profoundly moving.

We must define a story which encourages us to make use of the place where we live without killing it, and we must understand that the living world cannot be replicated.

I don't need to see the trail to know you're at the end of it. My grandfather's compass may not work, but mine is still true.

We don't fight about music. We don't fight about artistic direction. The things like that we could fight about, we really don't. We are pretty lucky for that.

God commands us to be filled with the Spirit, and if we are not filled, it is because we are living beneath our privileges

Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain.

Not all who discharge their debts of gratitude should flatter themselves that they are grateful.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

Mandarin ducks mate for life and will die of loneliness if separated from their chosen mate.

Freedom in intellectual work is found to be the basis of internal discipline.

If you just look for what's right - in others, in relationships, in yourself and your journey - you'll always find it. Same when looking for what's wrong.

Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life