I look back on some of my early reviews of others, and realize to my chagrin that I've been as guilty as anybody else on that front.

As lovers of truth, we want to be close to it. Sometimes - evil thought, evil temptation - we want to be close to it by misleading others about its presence.

I'm pretty sure my dog, Pip, gets lonely when there is no one to be with him. But we humans can end up with a gnawing worry about that separation possibly becoming a permanent condition.

Of course, each of us has to write our own book, live our own life.

I worry that we don't currently have a democracy in the United States. Instead we have what [political philosopher] Sheldon Wolin has recently labeled a sort of inverted totalitarianism.

It is an admonition to myself when I am reading other people's books. Writing a book is very difficult to do, even a bad one. I try to remember that when reading someone else's work.

None of us is perfect, but the point of our writing is to try to become better, to learn something that we may not have already realized, about ourselves, about the world we inhabit.

We can never leave loneliness behind completely - it is part of what forms us.

At some point just about all of us experience loneliness. In a sense, it is what it means to be a sentient animal, to have an experience of separation from others.

The only education is enlightenment.

everyone thinks that other places is more fun than staying at home, but at the end..you will be coming home, because..that's where you belong to..

Worry is a god invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse it takes away the appetite and turns the hair gray.

Wherever you walk, I go with you. Selah.

The depiction of the exterior as opposed [to] what you're feeling inside is always so different that it's impossible to know what is right.

You have to be in love with your story ... It's the love of the light; the time of day; of watching the moment unravel.

Russia became a juicy chunk of the Third World, with immense reserves of cheap labor, a vast treasure of natural resources, and industrial assets to be sold off at giveaway prices.

I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health.

Get up guys. We’ve got a visit to pay.” “What are you talking about?” “I am not hanging out with Blake Lazar again.

I am Valentino Rossi. If I stay in MotoGP it is to try to win. When that is not possible it is time to stay at home and work in the garden!