I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.

I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.

I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

I'd rather be miserable and free than happy and caged.

A dove will never nest in a burning tree, nor will love ever reside in unforgiving heart.

Even those of us who are very very aware are still so unaware. Everything's relative so that, the more you know, the more you know you don't know anything.

Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

You better watch out You better not cry Better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town

I've never met any strong critic of the United States anywhere in the world who gave us any credit for having limit on government.

The eyes are the window to where the soul is supposed to be.

In England the rich own the poor and the men own the women.

Most movies are lucky to have one moment, one shot that you look at and you always remember that moment and that scene.