I learned to love stories by listening to them.

I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.

In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.

A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?

The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

Drug programs began to turn their attention and money away from prevention and into maintenance. Methadone was cheaper than social workers, I suppose.

A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and being loved.

Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

I walked and walked, sometimes with an objective- a friend's house, a shop, the church or school- but mostly at random, to outrun oppression.

You can’t prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why don’t the governments stop them?

You can be careful as far as you can, but you never know when you're going to fall over and break your ankle. It's like when you drive a car, you don't think about crashing, do you?

You must have a good time meeting people if you expect them to have a good time meeting you.

An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.

Let's unite our impassioned voices to combat climate change. The time is now.

If everyone sweeps before his own front door, then the street is clean.

It strikes me as weird that a 25 year old man would even find a 16 year old attractive.

A great man is one who has not lost the child's heart.

The Lord is knocking at the door of our hearts. Have we put a sign on the door saying: 'Do not disturb'?