I lost my job and started painting houses with a friend. The marriage had ended about the same time the career did.

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.

There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.

Your healing begins with a step of faith in the Great Physician, Jesus Christ.

Take responsibility for making conscious choices.

I think that nobody - certainly in this world - can say that they don't have the human denial element about them or fear or whatever it is as juxtaposed with faith and hope and freedom and love.

Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.

In my experience of these things, parties which shout about dirty tricks and the like tend to do so because they fear a direct hit in some vulnerable part of their political anatomy.

My concern today is not with the length of a person's hair but with his conduct.

What does Obama mean keep working on closing Gitmo? It's a broken promise. Obama said we were gonna close Gitmo the first day he was in office and it never happened.

The law is bigger than money - but only if the law works hard enough.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.