I have nothing. My model is I have nothing figured out, and I'm starting with some little nugget and hoping that it will talk back to me enough to let it grow.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

My fear drives me. My faith directs me. I am an entrepreneur.

Life is not worth living if you forget to love.

I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.

Better than the strength of men and horses is our wisdom.

Self-acceptance has been a blessed by-product of middle age.

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.

Good manners make any man a pleasure to be with. Ask any woman.

Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns; should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.

One can impose silence on sentiment, but one can not give it limits.