I like narrative, and I ultimately am in love with the men and women I write about, most of them.

It's highly competitive to be here. People don't come to California to drop out anymore. It's a very striving place.

If the Pilgrims had landed in Santa Monica Bay rather than Boston, we'd have six states out here!

A city where everyone seemed to live in a bungalow on a broad avenue lined with palm, pepper or eucalyptus trees, where there was never any snow.

I don't reverberate to victimhood, probably because of my own life. I refused to become a victim myself, so it's not one of my big stories.

In our public life, California is on the verge of being a failed state, and no state has failed in the history of this country.

The Irish didn't read and write for a couple of thousand years, and I think we developed good memories and recall. We have a sense of the revelatory detail. I look for them.

Sometimes God takes your life for some crazy twists and turns.

We understand the ordinary business of living, We know how to work the machine

Life's lessons aren't always new. Often they're the same old worn-out truths offering us greater depths of wisdom and understanding.

Don't beg for approval or expect respect. Respect comes from within and your choice to allow people to take it from you, by how you teach them to treat you.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ is rightfully seen as the central fact, the crucial foundation, and the chief doctrine of the plan of salvation, which we are called to teach.

Unlike a mere deception or a simple secret, which gives the impression that something's been taken away, a great magician makes you feel like something's been given to you.

I'd love to be able to fit in a box. Like one of those people who fit into small boxes. I'd love it.

I'm not a great fan of monarchy in general, but I have to say the Danish monarchy is closer to the people; it's not as stuffy as the English one.

Our favorite attitude should be gratitude.